The plan now is to restripe only one-fifth of Keolu Drive, from Hamakua Drive to Wana'ao Road, said Cheryl Soon, director of the city Department of Transportation Services.

"Meanwhile we are working with some folks in the community to get some resolution on where we're going for the longer term with the balance of the project," Soon said.

The city will evaluate the project and promised to remove it if it doesn't improve traffic, said Barry Wong, a Kailua Neighborhood Board member.

"There's a lot of people who don't like it," said Wong, adding that he collected more than 2,000 signatures of people opposing the project.

A major concern is the placement of the 6-foot-wide bike lane between the traffic lane and the curbside area, he said. Drivers will have to cross the bike lane to make right turns and bicyclists will have to watch out for opening doors from parked cars, Wong said.

"There's a potential for a big accident to occur," he said.

Soon, strongly disagreeing with Wong's assessment, said the bike lane design is a common one used throughout the world and elsewhere in Hawai'i. The community wants bicycle paths and a recent survey by Kane'ohe Ranch, a large Kailua landowner, confirmed that, Soon said.

"We find that when we build them people feel safer and more people use them," she said.

"There's a lot of bicycling on the route. Essentially, we created a route to say: This is the area where the bicycles belong."

Bicycle lane projects are often contentious, said Charles Rosa-Colenan, executive director for the Hawaii Bicycling League. Historically, transportation focused on autos, and expanding the system to include bikes became problematic because of the increased cost, Rosa-Colenan said.

Even bicyclists can't agree on a design, but the design on Keolu is fairly standard, Rosa-Colenan said, adding that bicyclists both oppose and support the design.

"It's not perfect, but there aren't a lot of alternatives given the different concerns," he said.

The project, as introduced in 1998, was just for a bike path on Keolu Drive but two years later evolved into a design that reduced the four-lane circle around Enchanted Lake to two lanes. Money became available in 2002.

The project caught many by surprise when the city began painting temporary lines on the road earlier this year. After receiving complaints, the city stopped work and convened meetings with a working group, which included area residents and neighborhood board members, to discuss the issues.

Reducing the size of the project was a good first step in resolving objections, said Faith Evans, transportation chairwoman for the Kailua Neighborhood Board.

"It shows the willingness of both (the Department of Transportation Services) and the community to work together in trying to mitigate this," she said.