Council senior traffic engineer Ron Minnema said the strips would be inspected after the accident, in which a woman was taken to hospital with a serious injury after her bicycle came out from under her while she was crossing the tracks on the cycleway at Wharf St about 8am.
The spongy rubber strips are made in Dunedin and glued into the gap between the track and the road.
They are designed to prevent cyclists' tyres from slipping out from under them on the tracks or their wheels getting caught in the rut.
The strips are made of recycled car tyres using a similar formula to the soft-fall matting used in playgrounds, and mean trains, which compress the strips as they pass, can still travel over the tracks.
They were first installed in 2004 and Mr Minnema said the council believed they had proved their worth, as the number of reports of people falling off their bicycles where skewed railway lines crossed Wharf St had declined noticeably since the strips went in.
While exact accident statistics were not known, anecdotally, cyclists found the crossing safer, he said.
He did not know how many times the strips had been replaced since 2004.
He was not aware of yesterday's accident until contacted by the Otago Daily Times.
It was possible the strips were worn out as they were not designed to last for many years, and he would send someone to look at them as soon as possible, he said.
That could not be done yesterday as there was another job which had to be completed first, Mr Minnema said.
The strips were the favoured option. Others were too expensive for such a small area, he said.
A contract engineer has previously told the ODT the tracks themselves could still be slippery when wet.
