Purpose-built separated cycle lanes along Dunedin's one-way system could be up and rolling as early as winter 2017, but some road users are not happy with the plans.
The scheme, in gestation since 2012 after two fatal cycling accidents in the central city, is budgeted to cost $7.5million - all of which will be funded by the New Zealand Transport Agency.
Any changes to car parking and landscaping will be paid for by the Dunedin City Council.
There were still several requirements the scheme would need to meet before it was guaranteed, with the next of those being a detailed business case, due in September, being accepted by an NZTA business group, agency project manager Simon Underwood said.
That decision was expected in October and, while not a certainty, the NZTA ranked the scheme top of its 20-strong list of nationwide walking and cycling projects expected between 2015 and 2018.
The cycle lanes would run along parts of Great King, Castle and Cumberland Sts. But Otago AA chairman Jeff Donaldson told the ODT yesterday that route should not have been chosen.
The AA's position was that the cycle lanes were a safety measure, and no road which combined heavy trucks and bicycles would be safe.
''Safety is paramount and we don't think State Highway 1 is the safest route. If it was, then why don't they allow cyclists on the motorway?''
Another option discussed in the planning process, using a Leith St-Anzac Ave corridor, would be safer for cyclists, Mr Donaldson said.
''And a lot of our observations are that people are cycling to the university, as opposed to the CBD.''
Mr Underwood said the Leith St corridor was looked at, but analysis had shown most cycle trips headed towards the CBD.
The Leith St corridor left cyclists too far away from the CBD, meaning they would have to cross a number of city blocks to reach the separated cycle lanes.
While the NZTA's cycleway business case is still to be finalised, the Otago Daily Times has been shown a draft version which is expected to remain largely unchanged until September.
That draft business case envisages 2.6m-wide cycle lanes running along the right-hand side of both the northbound and southbound one-way roads.
At that width, cyclists were able to pass one another, Mr Underwood said.
Those lanes would need to be narrowed in places - to accommodate car parks or intersections - to between 1.6m and 1.8m.
At that width, cycle lanes were considered too narrow for passing, reducing their usefulness.
An option that would have seen one two-way cycle lane built on just one of the one-way streets, reducing the number of car parks swallowed, had been all but dropped for safety reasons.
Instead, the two cycle lanes would be one direction only, except for short sections at the two start points - the Dunedin Botanic Garden and Queens Gardens, Mr Underwood said.
An option to include a significant number of car parks between the cycle lanes and traffic lanes had also been all but dropped, although the final business case was expected to retain about 20 five-minute car parks along the route to service businesses which needed them.
That would still mean about 370 car parks would be removed from the one-way system.
Mitigating that loss of car parking had been a major focus of work on the scheme to date, with both the NZTA and the Dunedin City Council working on ways to alleviate car-park losses while not compromising the cycle lanes' safety improvements.
Mr Underwood said the NZTA had looked at numerous options to retain parking, and was still weighing up whether more car parks could be retained close to Dunedin Hospital.
But every retained car park meant a reduction in the width of both the cycle lanes and the adjacent footpaths, he said, and such compromises ran the risk of making the cycle lanes redundant.
If the lanes narrowed in too many places, it was likely cyclists would find them too difficult and end up using the road - making the entire scheme pointless, he said.
DCC options for mitigating car parking losses include:
• Increasing the number of angled car parks on surrounding local roads - a move expected to create more than 100 extra parks.
• Promoting existing car parks with vacant spaces - estimated to be between 160 and 180 spaces. The St Andrew St car parking building usually had more than 120 spare spaces at busy times.
• Possibly building a new multistorey parking building on the DCC's existing car park on the northeast corner of the Frederick St-Cumberland St intersection. Such a building would include retail, medical or similar businesses at street level, with a yet-to-be determined number of parking levels above.
Mr Donaldson said AA members had raised significant concerns about the loss of parking, but the parking measures being discussed, in particular the proposed Cumberland St multistorey parking building, would go a long way towards moderating those.
Many of the parking concerns centred around access to the hospital, which the proposed parking building would address.
''We would fully support the concept of a multistorey parking building in that area. It certainly helps mitigate concerns we have about hospital parking.''
