Wait what? I did not notice that before! That's almost even more idiotic than having 28 spoke rear wheel on that thing. Why would they do that? It serves no reason whatsoever. Makes the frame weaker, makes cabling more fiddly (and trust me, trek internal routing is sometimes like straight from the soviet union with the 'innovations' and all that. Lose a tiny ferrule and you use all internal cabling capabilities for example), forces you to cut housings and have exposed cable which is a contamination risk etc etc etc. If they were smaht, they would have allowed for full length housings especially for shifter cables.

Except of course they expect riders to use the massive front rack to carry a full tool set including surgical clamp tweezers, flashlight and rare earth magnets (that's what I use to route internal cables)