The Hunter Street cycleway is set to be extended west to Islington as part of a trial to create a two-kilometre continuous bike lane.
Hunter Street between National Park Street in Newcastle West and Ivy Street in Islington will be dropped back from two lanes to one to allow room for the safe bicycle buffer zones separated from vehicle traffic and parallel street parking.
The project follows completion of the Stage 1 Hunter Street trial cycleway between Worth Place and National Park Street in 2021. Once linked, there will be two kilometres of dedicated cyclist lanes connecting Islington and Tighes Hill to the city.
The first stage of the cycleway has been criticised due to the relatively low usage compared to vehicle traffic, which was cut from two lanes to one.
Greens councillor Charlotte McCabe said she believed the cycleway will be used more once it connects to more areas.
"This piece of cycleway here is fantastic, but it's really difficult for cyclists to use if it's not connected and this piece that's going to be implemented here is going to make a huge difference," she said.
Newcastle lord mayor Nuatali Nelmes said City of Newcastle also wanted to hear feedback from the community on the concept.
"It's really important that we look at the consultation process and that's why this is being done as a trial," she said.
"The trial will have temporary infrastructure that does separate out cyclists for safety, but it does keep parking.
"We will monitor that and do rounds of consultation with both the users, the local businesses, also people that drive cars to make sure that we are using the the road network and the pedestrian width to cater for all those users.
"But what is also really important, as councillor McCabe said, is as we build these missing links these actually get easier to use for people.
"We do know that cycling from end to end, having a separated cycleway does increase the volume of usage so my expectation, and that's what we're trialing, is that with this missing link being catered for along Hunter Street we're likely and hopefully going to see an increase in cycling volume along here."
Newcastle Cycleways Movement president Sam Reich said the first stage of the cycleway had made the journey much safer for bike riders.
"You can tell from the volume of traffic that's on the street... how important it is to have to reduce congestion on the street by giving people options to getting into town," he said.
"This cycleway trial that's been put in so far between Worth Place and National Park Street has has worked extremely well.
"It's taken some time for the community to get used to it. But from the cycling perspective, it's made the street a lot safer.
"By extending it to Ivy Street we're anticipating that it will become an important commuter route into the city, hopefully reducing the congestion, the pressure on parking in town and this along with the other elements of the network that are being planned and worked on should should improve access to the centre of the CBD."
Cr Nelmes said the temporary infrastructure would be implemented in coming months.
City of Newcastle received $1.5 million from Transport for NSW under the NSW Government's Get NSW Active Program to complete the cycleway connection.
Community feedback on the proposed concept plans is open until November 8. Visit newcastle.nsw.gov.au/yoursay, to complete the online survey.
