I have a derailleur bike, a nice old Romic sport tourer from the '80s, and a Whitworth Rudge 3 speed updated to 700c wheels. I've ridden the Rudge year round for about 10 years averaging about 10 miles a day every work day, I just bought the Romic to replace the Rudge as my commuter. The Romic has an old campy 6 speed friction shift setup with an older DeoreXT RD and it shifts beautifuly, I could see it being a great bike for longer distance riding. The Rudge setup is so much better for my daily commute that I have switched back to riding it after only a few months on the Romic. I have never had to service the transmission on the Rudge at all, it has been absolutely bulletproof! I estimate it has endured about 20,000 miles of all season urban commuting since I got it, and who knows how many miles it got ridden since 1957.

I also had an SRAM Spectro7 with a drum brake on another commuter bike and it needed more attention than the Sturmey Archer hub needs. I had to shorten the shifter cable and the funny way that the cable terminates in the clickbox made it hard to install right, I think they improved the clickbox since then. They never could send me the right brake cable hardware so I had to make that up myself, making it difficult to remove and reinstall the cable during tube changes.

I think I will eventualy build a lightweight commuter that has a 3 to 5 speed internal and geer it so that I ride in the center geer most of the time, that way it will be most efficient. A bike like this is the middle ground between a single/fixed geer bike and sport touring/hybrid.

Matt