What I don't like about commuter bicycles, as a product, is a side effect of how they are made and marketed. They cost very little to produce because they are made in cheaper parts of the world, so once they are shipped to their market, they sell very cheaply, but if you want to get them maintained or fixed by someone locally the price seems astonishing. Part of the repair price is that the cost to pay anyone in the West is much higher than in Asia for comparable skill, but there's also monopoly practices in the price of the components. Until recently we in America were enjoying a healthy gray market of components from the UK and EU, where companies like Shimano could not legally enforce their minimum advertised price, a form of price fixing that is legal in the USA. Last year that channel was essentially closed. This also makes a bike essentially worthless and disposable after a few years of use. Someone will buy a bike and use it for a while and then their circumstances change, and the bike gets put out in the back yard to rust with the good intention of maybe using it again someday, or just thrown away because it's not worth the effort to sell, or sits on the classifieds for a year because the seller doesn't realize it's worth a tenth, not a half of what he paid new.

Another thing I don't like is that they are also often made to be sold, not to be ridden, in ways that are not always obvious. They have beneficial features that don't show well taken out (rust proofing, stronger wheels, nicer tires, provisions for accessories), and appealing features that are not that great bolted on (over complex drive trains, short travel no-damping suspension forks). They are sometimes very comfortable for a test ride by a naïf but in daily use show their comfortable design to be ineffective at moving down the road. It's educational to look at a share bike and compare it to a bike-shop commuter bike.

I feel this way because I'm uncomfortable that my life is exploitative and unsustainable in ways that I can't really fix, just by virtue of living in the West; and I'm an engineer.