Part of Frome Street's separated bikeway, in Adelaide's CBD, will be ripped up to accommodate two lanes of traffic during peak hour, as the council moves to tackle years of criticism about its cycling infrastructure design.

In a special Adelaide City Council meeting to deal with the issue, councillors last night voted to change the design of the bike lanes between Wakefield Street and Pirie Street to improve traffic flow.

But Lord Mayor Martin Haese said the first two blocks of Frome Street from Carrington Street would remain unchanged, but would be "greened up".

"That's largely a residential area and the residents need their car parking, and the cyclists need their segregated bikeway," he said.

"Once we get to Wakefield Street the volume of motorists on Frome actually goes up exponentially.

"We're going to put two lanes of traffic in either direction during peak hour only, so that motorists can come into the city and clear the city easier during peak hours but will still be keeping our cyclists safe because they'll have a designated bike lane."

Better planning for cyclists needed

The design is still being finalised, but will be expanded along the rest of Frome Street to North Terrace and eventually be rolled along a new east-west cycling corridor.

Adelaide City Council and State Government are jointly funding the $12-million expansion of the city's cycling infrastructure.

Mr Haese said the council would pick up the cost of replacing the current Frome Street bike lanes.

"We recognise that we've learnt some valuable lessons, but we have to do this at a higher quality," he said.

"The cost of doing the alterations to the existing section of Frome Street is at this time unknown because we'll have to do the final detailed design and take that out to costing and tender."

Property Council of Australia SA executive director Daniel Gannon welcomed the move to remove the lanes.

"The trouble-plagued Frome Street bikeway has been a boil on the backside of council business for far too long," Mr Gannon said.

"The successful motion put forward at Tuesday night's meeting has achieved a sensible compromise and hopefully lanced the boil."

The council will consult with businesses along Frome Street as it finalises the design.

"Which will be done in a relatively short period of time, [then] we'll go straight out to tender and then straight into construction," Mr Haese said.