Despite neighborhood and business opposition that delayed a decision this summer, Cleveland Avenue was identified again Monday as the best place for a bike route between the Highland Park and Midway areas of St. Paul.

Cleveland was chosen over Prior Avenue by an 8-4 vote of a community working group created by the St. Paul City Council after this summer’s delay.

Most of the group members agreed Cleveland Avenue would be the most convenient route for bicyclists between University Avenue and Randolph Avenue. Opponents of the Cleveland route argued that the loss of parking caused by bike lanes could be fatal to small businesses. Some also said they felt Cleveland was too busy and bicyclists should be encouraged to use Prior Avenue instead.

“I understand the direct route makes sense in an ideal world where there’s no collateral damage,” said Bob Stupka, owner of Davanni’s Pizza, one of the businesses that could suffer from the loss of parking. “This will impact businesses.”

Cleveland Avenue and Prior Avenue emerged as two finalists after several meetings and an open house by the working group. The group voted on its final choice at a meeting Monday evening at the Anderson Student Center on the University of St. Thomas campus.

Proponents of the Cleveland Avenue route acknowledged that it would limit parking and could harm businesses, but they argued Cleveland offers the most benefit to bicyclists.

“I think this would be a great route that a lot of people would use,” said Bill Lindeke, a member of the St. Paul Planning Commission’s transportation committee.

The Cleveland Avenue route now will be recommended to the city council for its consideration sometime before the end of the year. The working group plans to include a slate of safety and parking improvements it feels the city should take up if it goes ahead with bike lanes on Cleveland.

Bicycling advocates said they believe designated bike lanes on Cleveland would be safer than sharing a lane with cars on Prior Avenue in any case.

“I fee much safer on a bike lane than when there’s a ‘sharrow’ on the street,” said Amy Schwarz of Women on Bikes and Smart Trips. “The cars know where I’m supposed to be and I know where they’re supposed to be.”

In the end the only group members who voted in favor of Prior Avenue were business owners Stupka, Dick Trotter and Angel Chandler along with Union Park Land Use Committee member Anne White.

Voting for Cleveland Avenue were Lindeke and Schwarz along with representatives of the University of St. Thomas and St. Catherine University, the St. Paul Bike Coalition, the Union Park District Council and the Macalester-Groveland Community Council and its transportation committee.

Two members of the 14-member committee were absent for Monday’s vote. The committee was assembled in September after public pushback to the city’s announcement of plans to install bike lanes on Cleveland as part of its new citywide bike initiative.

That plan, adopted last spring, calls for doubling the mileage of cycling infrastructure across St. Paul over the next several decades.

City staff initially recommended Cleveland because it offers a direct connection between the University of St. Thomas, St. Catherine University, Highland Village and commercial cross streets such as Grand, St. Clair and Randolph avenues.

Installing bike lanes would require the elimination of about 240 Cleveland Avenue parking spaces, a cost many business owners and residents said outweighed the benefits the route offered cyclists.

Unlike Cleveland, Prior Avenue wouldn’t have needed to lose parking to accommodate bikes, said Luke Hanson, a capital and transportation planner for St. Paul.

If selected, Prior would have become a bike boulevard, meaning drivers and cyclists would essentially share the stretch and no separate lanes for bikes would be marked.

The problem with Prior is that the route is interrupted by a Summit Avenue median, Hanson said. Cyclists heading south toward Highland Park also would have St. Catherine University’s campus standing in the way.

Stupka told the group members who voted for bike lanes that Davanni’s and other businesses would be counting on them to promote Cleveland Avenue to a bicycling community that saw them as obstructionists.

“Try to convince those people that we’re not the evil empire,” Stupka said.

Jaime DeLage can be reached at 651-228-5450. Follow him at twitter.com/JaimeDeLage.