I tried a 50-34 compact crankset on one of my commuters a few years ago and hated it. If you're a regular participant on these forums, you've probably seen me ranting about the superiority of triples over compact doubles. And yet, I somehow talked myself into buying a compact crankset again. My thinking was that the bike it was intended for would primarily be a weekend road bike and I could probably tolerate the 50-34 on the few occasions I rode it to work. Well, I've ridden it to work twice this week and I'm not tolerating it very well. It's usable, but apparently I can't use it without feeling compelled to rant. So here I am.

I'm a nerd, so I thought I'd plug some numbers into a gear calculator and see if I was missing something. Doing so, it's clear to me why 50-34 sucks so badly for commuting. Here's what the Sheldon Brown gear calculator tells me my speed will be at 90 rpm for my current gear options:

[table="width: 500, class: grid"]
[tr]
[td][/td]
[td]50[/td]
[td]34[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]12[/td]
[td]29.9[/td]
[td]20.3[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]13[/td]
[td]27.6[/td]
[td]18.7[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]14[/td]
[td]25.6[/td]
[td]17.4[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]15[/td]
[td]23.9[/td]
[td]16.2[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]16[/td]
[td]22.4[/td]
[td]15.2[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]17[/td]
[td]21.1[/td]
[td]14.3[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]19[/td]
[td]18.9[/td]
[td]12.8[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]21[/td]
[td]17.1[/td]
[td]11.6[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]23[/td]
[td]15.6[/td]
[td]10.6[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]26[/td]
[td]13.8[/td]
[td]9.4[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]29[/td]
[td]12.4[/td]
[td]8.4[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]

I typically cruise around 18 mph on rolling stretches of road, maybe getting up as fast as 25 once in a while. So if I start in the small ring from a stop (about 20 times on my 10-mile commute) I'm very likely to want the big ring sometime before I stop again, but probably not long before I need to stop again. Each step on the 34T ring gives me an absurdly small bump in speed, but let's say I get up to around 15 mph before I decide to jump to the big ring. Now I'm in the 34-16 combination cruising around 15 mph and to find a good next step after changing to the big ring I need to downshift the rear three times because it would have required four downshifts to stay in approximately the same gear. Who thought that would be a good idea?

The thing that really struck me about this today is that the more cogs you have in back, the worse this problem gets. I think I'm starting to understand why everyone suddenly started thinking 1x11 was a good idea.

Anyway, I'm curious to hear from anyone who has a 50-34 on their commuter and is happy with it. What is your typical usage pattern like?