Michael Fagan reckons he cops abuse about twice a week over his preferred mode of transportation. On a scenic ride through the eastern suburbs from Darling Point to Centennial Park early on a recent weekday, the financial consultant encountered a ute whose driver became exasperated with the cyclists' speed as he tailed him through a roundabout.

The driver conveyed his impatience by leaning on the horn. Then he conveyed it again, in words: ''I'll slice you in half, you f---ing poof,'' he yelled.

''That's the intimidation that goes on all the time in Sydney,'' he says.

Sydney is full of Catholics and Protestants who long ago left sectarian divisions behind. And it is full of cyclists and motorists who do not perceive themselves as part of a tribe defined in opposition to another.

But many do, and hostilities between flag-bearers of these different means of getting about seem to be growing as more and more cyclists pour onto the streets as an alternative to the city's crowded public transport network and clogged roads.

The number of people cycling to work in Sydney each day has doubled to nearly 12,000 in the decade to 2011.

The growth is prompting two related phenomena: an increase in hostile encounters between cyclists and motorists, and demands for government to provide cyclists with better and safer infrastructure.

''This is a cultural issue,'' the general manager of the NSW Centre for Road Safety, Marg Prendergast, says.

''Drivers see cyclists as a little bit arrogant,'' she says. ''Cyclists see drivers as a little bit arrogant.''

Prendergast, who is developing a cycling safety strategy to be finished by the end of the year, says a big part of that strategy will be tackling the perceived divide between cyclists and motorists.

That is easier said than done, with just about every car driver in Sydney sharing a story about the bad behaviour of the odd bike rider: their failure to indicate, to keep up with traffic or the way they ignore red lights with impunity.

(To do so is a risk for cyclists: about 12 per cent of cycling fatalities occur when bike riders disobey road rules.)

Electrician Anthony Pepi adopts Prendergast's adjective to describe the cyclists he encounters.

''It's a kind of arrogance,'' says Pepi, who experiences frustration particularly when merging with groups of cyclists.

''They think they have the right of way all the time. When you challenge some of them, they shout obscenities back at you.''

Statistics show that teaching cyclists and motorists to accommodate each other on the road is not just about manners - it is a continuing public health issue.

Already 13 cyclists have died on NSW roads in the first eight months of the year, compared with five during the same period last year.

''This year is a really bad year for us,'' Prendergast says. ''It's a worrying trend. Even though the numbers are really small, its enough for us to respond to.''

The injury figures, she says, also tend to be understated. ''They don't go to the police,'' she says of cyclists. ''They go home and then turn up to the hospital later.''

Hospital figures show more than 2000 people a year in NSW turn up with injuries sustained while cycling.

''Cycling in Sydney is not all that safe,'' says Dr Jake Olivier, senior lecturer in the school of mathematics and statistics at UNSW, who has studied injury rates.

A 2010 study, for instance, found that the injury risk for a cyclist in greater Sydney was more than 10 times that for car drivers.

Dr Kate Curtis works as a trauma nurse at St George Hospital in Sydney's south. She resuscitates patients in ER and follows them up as they move through intensive care and into the ward.

''About 5 per cent of our major trauma [cases] come from pedal cyclists,'' she says. ''And it is increasing''.

Curtis, who is also an academic specialising in population health, sees the ugliest of the two groups' disregard for each other.

''On a couple of occasions, we've had badly injured cyclists say the car didn't even stop,'' she says.

''They can be in hospital for months and have brain injuries. Trying to get your life back after your injury gets forgotten, but it has a massive impact.''

What needs to be noted, however, is that apart from a recent spike, the longer term trend shows cycling seems to be getting safer.

The worst year on record for cycling deaths was 1955, says Prendergast, when 46 bike riders died.

When statisticians at the University of NSW analysed hospital admissions data for cycling injuries, they found that even after mandatory helmet laws were passed in 1991, the number of NSW cyclists admitted to hospitals with head injuries continued to rise: from about 600 a year, to more than 1000 in 2006.

Then something changed.

The number of people cycling increased significantly but the number who sustained serious injuries began falling steadily.

Four years later, the head injury figures had reached their lowest level since records were kept in 1988.

Olivier attributes this to better paths. ''Councils started spending a lot of money on cycling infrastructure,'' he says.

What this shows, and what the experts believe, is that for all the discussion about the cultural clashes between cyclists and motorists, the important thing governments can do to improve safety is to get them out of each others' way.

This means new bike lanes, new bridges and new paths.

''The most critical thing we can do to support cyclists is the separation of cyclists and other road users by the development of cycleways,'' Prendergast says. ''That's No. 1.''

But that is easier said than done.

The need for separation is going to increase if the state government succeeds in its objective of doubling the 370,000 bicycle trips taken in Sydney each day within three years.

More than two years into its term, Prendergast's ultimate employer, the O'Farrell government, is yet to build a metre of dedicated cycle path - despite the continued and rapid growth of cycling as a means of transportation.

Transport Minister Gladys Berejiklian seems to have permanently mothballed a ''Greenway'' bike path that would link two major cycling catchments in the inner west - the Cooks River and Iron Cove.

There has been no progress on a link to allow the streams of cyclists who head south towards the Harbour Bridge each morning access to the Bridge without a long stair climb.

And there has been no work done on the CBD's half-formed thatch of cycle paths, the nascent beginnings of a network long championed by lord mayor Clover Moore.

Instead, a committee set up by Premier Barry O'Farrell to coordinate CBD transport planning has become a vacuum.

The Central Sydney Traffic and Transport Committee has met just twice in more than a year, decided nothing of importance, and continues to wait for two government documents - a CBD Access Strategy and a city-wide cycling strategy - that have been under development for more than two years.

Avid cyclist and Liberal pollster Mark Textor, who is close to Barry O'Farrell, is hopeful governments will start to deliver better and more coherent bike infrastructure.

''I don't think it's natural space for conservative [governments],'' Textor says.

''I don't think they're less amenable but they have other agendas in mind,'' he says. ''We're working on that.''

The rest of the city, meanwhile, will be waiting for it.