A very promising young road racer was killed recently on a training ride because, contrary to your opinion, a road bike is NOT the very best mount when riding amongst the heathen. Your head is down, your six is up, and BLAM, you just barreled full KOM, into a stalled Escalade in the middle of the bike lane. Sorry to tell you (but you will find out soon enough) you did not survive your injuries. Not all 'upright' flat-bar bicycles are 'cruisers'. 30 extra minutes to be on a bike that allows easy monitoring of forward progress is not too much to pay, I don't think.

No matter the bike -- pay attention, watch where you are going, and for heaven's sake, DO NOT TRAIN IN THE BIKE LANE!

Rene (damn his soul) Herse told you that. Well, I don't believe it. 50mm x 50psi (rock hard) is no match for 25mm x 100psi (rock hard). It's not even close. And if 38mm x ??psi is 'faster' still (unlikely), it really doesn't matter. I don't own a bike that will let me find out. Now can you just hush, so no one gets any bright ideas about discontinuing production of 25mm tires, please, and thank you.

Actually, a casual perusal of past threads would show that the dominant BF commuting platform is an early to mid 90's MTB with street slicks replacing the OEM knobby tires. The o.p. is an outlier among outliers in both the length of their commute and the type of bike they prefer. Here in the commuting capitol of these United States (Portland, OR) I discern no clear favorite. It's jaw dropping, the breadth and scope of two (rarely more ... or less) wheeled conveyance used by bike commuters.

What makes Portland the (bike) commuting capitol?

Same thought process that produces personal opinion given as "Fact", like nothing beats a road bike for commuting.

I would expect it to be the fraction of trips made by bike, though Portland doesn't win in that category. Maybe the death rate is lower there than in other cities? I'll wait for an answer. There are quantitative methods to decide whom to give first prize.

But the "better bike" is truly a matter of opinion unless we narrow down the criteria severely.

Sheesh, tough crowd. For it's size Portland, OR does have more commuting cyclists than any other city. Note the qualifier: for its size. And the other qualifier: commuting cyclists. I did deliver the information as if it were factual, but I did not say it is factual.

Thanks for the "non-factual information."

List of U.S. cities with most bicycle commuters

Portland is number 20 in the US with an impressive 5.99%.

So I see. Oh well, I'll go away now to lick my wounds.

The best commuter is the one I enjoy, and typically I get bored with a bike after 3 or 4 years.

You have plenty to celebrate, living in Portland.

I don't know, I'd kill to be able to do loops in Prospect Park or Central Park again. There's nothing like that here. I've looked. Asked. Begged. But given all the money Portland has spent on bike lanes, sharrows, and traffic calming devices, it's shocking, and kind of sad to learn just how little actual (bike) wheels on the ground it has produced. Wow, just wow ...

I think there are recent studies of what it takes people to get out there. I just read that there should be a network of bike routes that is uninterrupted from one edge to another. I don't remember what else I've read. One thing that I think helps but takes a long time to work is a Complete Streets policy and enough people in government to follow through. They have to remind the engineers and pavement/paint workers to do it right.

NYC has done a lot in recent years. I've started riding on public streets here in 1975. They've put in a lot of bike lanes, and a lot of them are bad. For instance, the bike lanes are in the door zone. Some are too narrow. Some need barrier protection. Well, they're making those corrections in some places, though I don't know if there is a commitment to do all of them right. For instance, some streets are too narrow for both a motor vehicle lane and a bike lane, but they squeezed them in anyway. I'd prefer one general-purpose lane. Sharrows would be nice but we really don't need them. I want to ride in the middle of the lane. Sharrows are no good unless they are placed in the middle of the lane. In some places where the bike lane is interrupted by construction, the City has placed plastic barriers that are made heavy by filling them with water. This is a definitely improvement, keeping the bike route uninterrupted. We have a long way to go. I feel my life in danger more than ever. Part of that is just age. In a sense, I should feel safer than before because we are less weird and because we have bike facilities. But it's made worse by heavier traffic and worsening attitudes of some drivers.

We have an amazing bike path here, the American River Bike Trail. It's really frustrating on a road bike if you are trying to get somewhere on time because it goes up and down and back and forth along the bends of the river ravine and it has many nice people on it who are not all on bikes, much less going road-bike speed.

The adjacent straight and level road is an artery with the usual features of no protection and huge speed differential. Although it does in fact have bike lanes nearly all the way

It's good to qualify it here like you did.

You may turn your nose up at it, but for that commute, I'd prefer an urban commuter city-type eBike. I have the nice ride of the fatter tires, front suspension and suspension seatpost, as well as having a rack with trunk bag & fenders, and a full set of lights.

The electric aspect cancels out the weight and aerodynamic penalties. Want more exercise? Turn the assistance down. Want to not arrive sweaty? Turn it up. 40 mile round trip commute is doable on one charge of this rig unless you're throttling the whole way or going 25+ mph the whole way.

Aventon Level.2 commuter, w/Topeak MTX trunk bag w/fold-down panniers. I have a FoldyLock Forever in place of the water bottle now, and carry water in the trunk bag.

My Subaru has suspension, and seats 5.

I am not arguing but Corvallis Oregon did place third. So some place in Oregon was high on the list.....

I was not surprised that Cambridge was the only place in the east that made the top ten. Riding the roads in the Mid Atlantic would be near suicide. If I really want to die while cycling Florida is a good place to start I guess.

I've ridden through Corvallis a few times. I'll pay more attention next time; seemed like a college town with bike lanes.

I've ridden Miami to Key West and back; people talk about it being a death trap, but I didn't find it particularly concerning. Traffic sure, but meh. Nobody went out of their way to frighten me.

I feel unworthy and overrated.......

Oh yes, that is definitely comparable to a road bike.

Correct. But for the fact my Subaru is powered by an ICE and your road bike is powered by an electric motor

I bike commuted for about 10 years in NYC, 10 miles each way. As Tom says above, they made a lot of progress here over the years. When I first started there were no bike lanes on either 1st or 2nd Avenues, the two that I almost always used to get to/from my office in Manhattan. After a year or two they put in bike lanes, on the left side of the one way streets. But what I discovered with these bike lanes is I was corralled and invisible to the turning traffic. Without them I'd always be watching for left turning cars (we always ride on the left on the one ways in NYC) and would take the lane to prevent a left hook. Over time though the drivers got used to the lanes and would look more, plus the lanes themselves got ever more crowded and you'd always be aware as a driver there were bikers there.

As for road bike vs upright MTB/hybrid, what I found in NYC is that it didn't make a difference on the time. It took an hour to get to work whichever bike I took, and I would ride fast. But in NYC there is so much stop and go even on a bike that the riding speed did not matter. You are always getting stopped at a light, watching out for cars, being cautious of pedestrians and in general etc... Maybe I could take 5 minutes off my time on my road bike because I could blast up the Manhattan Bridge or Prospect Park hill a little faster, but that was about it. I would use my old Trek commuter about 95% of the time. I'd take the road bike on the occasional nice day so I could ride after work too.

I took a trip to Seattle one time, a place known for cycling and cyclists, and was terrified riding there, or at least in the busy areas. I know what to expect in NYC but I didn't in Seattle. I lived there in the 80s when cycling was just taking off too but I didn't like how it progressed. (And they are still talking about the missing link to the BG trail 40+ years later.) I biked in Copenhagen and that was great, everybody bikes there. Also Amsterdam, a little less nice than Copenhagen and a little more chaotic. I only rode in Portland when I did STP back in the 80s, and that doesn't count.

I usually commute on drop bars (though not a full road bike, as my commuter is a relatively heavy steel bike with 35c wide puncture resistant tires) and it's a few minutes faster than commuting on my backup commuter bike, a Dahon folder with 20" wheels with the same type of tires. I personally much prefer the riding position on the drop bars, and would definitely not want to go to flat bars full time. My commute is pretty much the same as yours was, 34km round trip in pretty heavy city traffic with lots of traffic lights.