A proposed 90 per cent cut to Auckland Transport's walking and cycling capital budget has enraged bike advocates, with accusations it may stand in the way of safety.

A draft budget to be discussed at AT's board meeting next week proposes cutting the fund for creating new cycling and walking projects from $65 million in 2018 to about $6.5m in 2019 and 2020.

That's despite AT's total expenditure being expected to rise from $1.3 billion in 2018 to $1.8b in 2020.

Auckland Director of Generation Zero Leroy Beckett said the proposal makes little sense.

He says putting the brakes on cycling projects could have serious consequences.

"If we stop building that infrastructure, it will stay really dangerous. We won't see more people on bikes, we'll see worse congestion. And people will get injured or maybe even die." 

He said infrastructure investments in recent years had seen the number of people taking to bikes skyrocket and that proposed budget would leave the cycling network half-built and dangerous.

"We don't really understand why Auckland Transport is proposing this change when it has supported us so strongly in the past," he said.

However, an Auckland Transport spokesman said the drop reflected the end of a three- year project to boost cycling in the city and that the actual figure was unlikely to end up as low as the draft.

"The $64.984 million figure for the 2018-19 year reflects the completion of a major investment in cycling in the previous Long-Term Plan," he said.

"This was co-funded by the government through the Urban Cycleway Fund."

The lower figures reflected only the "baseline" funding because no decisions about further cycling investments had been made yet, he said.

The draft would also be subjected to further debate and public consultation, and informed with input from the council and government.

"As part of the 10-year budget process, we are keen to get the public's views about what additional funding they would like to see spent on the cycling programme," he said.

Cycling has seen a rapid rise in popularity across the region in recent years, with 3.67m bike trips counted across Auckland in 2017, 6.2 per cent more than in 2016, according to official figures.

Bikes now make up 9.4 per cent of traffic heading into the city through Queen Street.

- with content from NZ Newswire