“Council will consider pausing the bike lane rollout in the Hoddle Grid over the coming year,” a council spokesman said on Thursday.
Lord Mayor Sally Capp admitted that the negative reaction had played a major role in the council’s decision.
“A big part of the feedback about bike lanes is that people felt they were taken by surprise,” she said.
“Because the city was so empty we took that as the opportunity to do capital works like bike lanes because we wouldn’t cause disruption when people came back. But then when people started coming back they said,‘Hey,what are these new things?’”
Capp said the council needed to make improvements on how it communicated changes and the rollout was well-intentioned.
She said protected bike lanes took up 1 per cent of the city’s total road space and there were 50 lanes leading into the city for cars.