In New York City even seemingly simple sustainability quandries set off turf wars. There's no starting fresh in this city, whatever the show-biz legends say: to make change happen here, you've got to grapple with deep-rooted self-interest, and the city's legacy of bare-knuckled business.

Take commuting to work by bicycle. Seems like a no-brainer: totally free of dangerous air pollutants, virtually climate-neutral, and good for the health of a population statistically beset by obesity. Sufficiently magnified, it would help cut the load on our already-stressed mass transit systems, and clear the crippling weekday traffic in and around Lower and Central Manhattan.

When I got my venerable 1991 Miyata Elevation tuned up at a local bike shop in June, the owner told me they were busier than ever selling new bikes and fixing up older ones. So I knew casually that commuting by cycle had boomed in NYC this year in parallel with rising gasoline prices.

Proof to this anecdote arrived at the end of October, when the City's Department of Transportation announced a 35% increase in bicycle commuting. "This year, an average of more than 12,500 cyclists were counted crossing DOT's screenline -- a set of checkpoints leading into the Manhattan CBD [central business district] -- up from about 9,300 in 2007," reported Streetsblog. "It's the biggest jump in raw numbers since the count began and the largest percent increase since 2003, when the count went up 36 percent. Overall, cycling in the city has doubled in the past six years."

"Bike traffic on the Manhattan Bridge accounted for the biggest increase citywide, with an average 2,232 bicyclists crossing the span daily, a 70% increase," the New York Daily News reports today. "Bikers on the Williamsburg bridge quadrupled since 2000 - from 733 to 3,000 - and on the Brooklyn Bridge by 10% since last year."

"From 1980, biking increased from 2,081 to 12,583 cyclists," according to the DOT's October report, and city officials hope the number of cycle commuters will reach 18,000 by 2015.

However, finding safe, legal bike parking is a long-standing difficulty in New York City -- never mind the sometimes-deadly traffic jams or bicycle-hostile mass transit. New York City apparently lags well behind comparable metropoli in other nations in coping with this problem: local clean-transit advocates Transportation Alternatives offer case studies from around the world that show when cities provide safe and sufficient bicycle parking, there is no lack of bikes to take advantage.

Today, as reported on Streetsblog, the City is proposing new regulations to require locked bike rooms in almost all new construction in the city. However, as WNYC radio reports, the powerful Real Estate Board of New York already opposes the plan, saying in part that the City needs to prove there is demand for indoor bicycle parking space.

It's a Catch-22: Providing the indoor parking would demonstrate the need. But builders say they want proof of the need before building the parking.

New Yorkers prize -- and ultimately pay for with their rental and purchase dollars -- almost any amenity that makes the urban grind a little less grindy. Examples from other cities are a good indication that when developers provide indoor, safe bicycle parking, it will pay them back in multiples.

It's this sort of situation that often makes me feel as if New York City epitomizes some of the toughest sustainability challenges the 21st century. How do we create well-paying, fulfilling work, and safe, affordable, pleasant neighborhoods and homes, for a fast-growing population? How do we transform our centuries-old layers upon layers of infrastructure into systems that don't harm the environment and the climate -- and maybe even make them better? How do we make that happen amid antique regulatory, economic and legal structures that resist change? And how do we get less-than-visionary businesses to perceive the profit in embracing sustainability?