I had the same reaction when bike lines were rolled out over London.

The influx of slower and less inexperienced riders with the (correct) mentality of "I have the right to cycle as slowly as I feel safe to", vs the previous (incorrect, but accepted) mentality of "keep up with traffic or pull over" amongst riders, made my cycle commute less efficient.

But it's better now. People learn, the city adjusts, attitudes change.

I guess people aren’t always rational, but do those who blame the cyclists not realize how bad things would be if those cyclists were also in cars?

Previously, some were in cars, but others in public transport.

> Given the very limited space available in Paris centre, I don't really see an easy way unfortunately...

Bicycles take less space than cars, both on road and when parked, don't they? A four-lane bicycle highway is as wide as one-lane car road. If anything, people switching from cars to bicycles should produce more free space for the city, not less.

Am I missing something?

Many streets have been transformed to one way or made cycle-only so some critical arteries are getting congested a lot. I feel the violence and anger too, you don't even need to go to Paris, the suburbs are becoming a mess of seething drivers. I get a lot more of very dangerous behaviour, insults from drivers on shared infrastructure as I did 5 years ago, even though I have my kids in a cargo and I cycle around the max assisted (25km/h) speed or higher if my legs work, most of the time.

I see shouting matches at least once a week, angry drivers honking on streets they can't even pass a bicycle... And isolated infrastructure is not always possible...

I feel this has become another part of some culture war, where I just don't have a license and drive my kids around in a bicycle (I don't want to drive a car) so I'm some angry green extremist out to annoy every driver out there...

In Paris, most people who are now biking are people who would have taken public transportation before, so the amount of cars on the roads is roughly the same as before.

Do you have a citation for that? Is car ownership and usage for city residents really the same?

I don't live there anymore but I grew up in Paris -

I knew absolutely nobody living in Paris driving to another location in Paris. It's always been metro first, bicycle sometime. Almost all of the passenger car you see in Paris are people driving from the suburb.

This is why this whole change was even politically possible.

Many cars in Paris are driven by people commuting to Paris from outside. There is a real fracture between suburbans (who don't vote for those changes happening in Paris) and city residents who votwd for them.

Possibly the dis-ingenuity of vocal posters? The continuing anti-rational love of the most expensive form of entranched transport?