Originally Posted by
ScottCommutes
You can't necessarily win this one, either, because you don't really get to choose your commute. The first half of my commute is open roads through a flat, swampy area where I would prefer drop bars to tuck and go faster. The rest of it enters urban areas with more and more stop lights and bad pavement and traffic and pedestrians and bikes. I essentially want a road bike for the first half and a mountain bike for the second.
Solution: mountain bike with aero bars added.
I spent the first 10 of 20 years of bike commuting on a drop bar bike, enjoying it for the suburban miles and tolerating it for the city riding. Then, because I decided I cared more about reliability and safety in city traffic than speed, I switched to a mountain bike.
Finally, I added a set of aero bars to the mountain bike. All the advantages of the toughness and safety of the mountain bike, at roughly 90% of the speed of the drop bar bike. Now that I'm retired, I do most of my miles on an aero-bar-equipped hybrid. There are no disadvantages, except maybe looking weird to other cyclists.