Des Moines is removing a buffered bike lane on East Grand Avenue in the East Village and returning on-street parking back to the curb after local business and neighborhood leaders failed to back the pilot project.

The city was scheduled to repaint the street lines on Monday.

The bike lane, which was installed last year between Second and Pennsylvania avenues, was a experimental project to see how drivers and others would respond to moving parking lanes away from the curb and adding bike lanes between parked cars and the sidewalk.

Supporters say data shows the project improved safety on the street, but business owners said moving parking away from the curb made it more dangerous for people exiting their cars and delivery drivers unloading cargo.

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City officials said they left the decision on whether to continue to pilot project up to neighborhood leaders, who voted "overwhelmingly" to remove the protected bike lane, according to a letter from the Historic East Village Board.

“While the protected bike lanes helped to reduce speeds and cross distances, they led to frustrations with business owners, delivery folks, developers and many visitors,” the group's letter reads.

Messages left for the president and vice president of the East Village board weren’t immediately returned.

Mike Armstrong, the director of communications and planning for the Des Moines Street Collective, said removing the protected bike lanes will make the street more dangerous for riders.

Changing again is "a little hard to swallow,” he said.

Armstrong said there should have been an opportunity for the public to weigh in on the issue before the city removed the bike lane. He said the East Village board conducted its vote behind closed doors.

“We don’t know what the general public feels about it because it was mostly just some businesses in the East Village that made the deciding vote on it,” he said.

Crews last week removed the elevated traffic islands the city had installed during the pilot project. This week, different stretches of East Grand will be closed as crews re-stripe the road.

East Grand Avenue will continue to be one lane in each direction with a 2½-foot buffer strip between traffic and bike lanes on each side of the street.

Drivers will again park against the curb, and the city will at install “bump-outs” at intersections (sections of sidewalk that cap the row of on-street parking spots).

“This is still far better than what it was,” City Engineer Steve Naber said.

City Councilman Joe Gatto said he frequently heard complaints about the project. The layout was confusing to drivers — some of whom didn’t know how to park in the spots a few feet removed from the curb — and it made snow removal difficult, he said.

“People just didn’t understand it, and that made it very confusing to a lot of folks,” he said.

The new layout will lengthen the distance pedestrians have to travel across the street from 21 feet to 38 feet, Naber said.

“(The pilot program design) would've been safer for every transportation mode,” Armstrong said.

Gatto said the road will still be safe, comparing its new design to Ingersoll Avenue, where the bicycle lanes are between car traffic and parked cars. According to a 2011 Des Moines Register story, accidents were cut in half after the city reduced Ingersoll’s lanes and added the space for cyclists.

The city is now considering moving the Ingersoll bike lanes between the parking spots and the sidewalk, Naber said.

However, the lanes would also be elevated to the same level of the sidewalk, theoretically eliminating the “where to park?” confusion that plagued the East Grand project.