I see a lot of commuter bikes set up for a cyclocross-style 1x8 or 1x10 drive train. Is there a reason for this? If you have such a set up, do you like it, or does it limit the bike's utility in other contexts?

This may not fully answer your question but, for the sole purpose of commuting, I could easily limit myself to using only the middle chainring as I find that most of my commuting is done using it plus gears 4-6 on the back. However, my bike is a touring bike and for that reason, I could encounter inclines and declines that would enable me (force me) to use both the small and large chainring and a wider range of gears on the back.

Whenever I get a new bike the first thing I do is switch it to 1x_. I never seemed to switch chainrings before anyways, and when I started riding in the winter the extra chainrings and front derailleur made keeping the drivetrain clean a pain. I really like it-- it makes cleaning and maintenance way easier. I live around Minneapolis, so it might be different in hilly places. By the way (maybe obviously), your choice of chainring is important in a 1x_.

I looked at it, for me it was partly utility loss, partly expense, partly style. I'd definitely give it a go if building up a commuting bike from scratch.

Only one of my three bikes, the MTB-beater, uses a cassette. It's the most likely to be used loaded or towing. So I want the nearly 5:1 gear range from the triple.

My Super Sport is generally well thought out as a sport-touring bike, but obsolete, with 27" rims and a 1-piece double crankset and a 5-speed freewheel. Switching to 1x10-speed would basically mean replacing the wheels and the entire drivetrain.

My Paramount is hung up at the moment. I've been enjoying the SS more. I haven't decided what to do with it, but it's most deserving of an expensive makeover. It might do well for me with a 1x10 or so.

I think there's a general lack of matched 1xN brifters. The solutions are mismatched or makeshift or really expensive. It's easier with MTB parts.

Seems like a lot of people dislike or have trouble shifting front derailleurs. For others, it's an aesthetic thing, simpler.

Since I don't need super-close gears, I bet I could be happy with a 1x drivetrain for commuting (in fact, one of my primary commuting bikes is a 1x1 ), but I don't mind front shifts, so all of my derailleur bikes have 2 chainrings.

I've definitely considered going to a 1X set up. I couldn't tell you the last time I shifted from my center chainring (both my bikes are triples).

If I did, I'd convert my CX bike to a 1X and then leave my roadie as is for potential touring.

One of my winter commuters is 1x8, with a 42 T up front and a 30 -12 cassette out back. Works well, does what it needs to. I use a thumb shifter on the stem. It only gets used for winter commuting, so does not limit the bikes utility.

Talk about obsolete, my commuter is a Peugeot with a TA crank and french-threaded everything.

It is all about having the right gearing range for the conditions.

I ride quite a few 1 by x drives because I ride a good number of bicycles with internal gear hubs as well as a 1 by 8 mountain bike which can handle urban assaults and some pretty challenging trail conditions.

My primary commuters have a 1 by 7 internal gear hub and a dual drive which is a 1 by 7 (cassette) by 3 (internal hub) which gives me 21 speeds and some very decent gear range.

How does that work?

Yeah, those two extra screws to have to turn every....uh, I guess, time you get a new bike is entirely too much work.

in St Louis Missouri I doubt you will need the wider range differences that 2 chainrings offer..

lots of simple cruiser bikes put a rear derailleur on for more gears,

there are multispeed internal hub gears, too.. they cost more to include.



I dropped the big bucks for a 14 speed IGH .. Columbia River valley is different than the Mississippi

The 3 speed internal hub is mated to a multi speed cassette instead of a single driver, the latest version is a 9 speed that gives 27 speeds off the rear.

It is like having a derailleur gear system with a low, medium, and high range.... some lunatics mate these with double and triple cranks to get a possible 81 speeds.

My 7 by 3 dual drive gives the same gearing as a touring bicycle with a single crank, I have a 9 by 3 that I will be installing soon and this is just to give closer steps on the cassette.

Neat. I've never seen that.

The dual drives are most commonly seen on smaller wheeled bicycles and folding bicycles where the reduction gearing in the hub offsets the gearing differential you get with a smaller wheel size and simplifies things by removing a front derailleur... for standard bicycles an 8 speed IGH is the sweet spot for commuting and all around riding on a non performance oriented bike.

My friend has a Bike Friday with a dual drive but retained the double crankset which he shifts manually (no front derailleur)... while touring in Europe he found that the regular setup and gearing was fine for most conditions but appreciated having that extra granny gear up front when the roads pointed straight up.

His bike has 54 speeds although there is a fair bit of gearing overlap...

I think I would enjoy a 1 by x set up. Currently I hardly use the middle and never use the small chainring. I have a 48 with a 11-32 and it does nearly everything I need. I rarely even go up to the 32 and tend to top out at the 28.

I think that if I was to set up a new commuter I would go along the lines of a single 48 or 50 with a 12-34. Since if it was solely a commuter I would have one pannier and no kid and a lighter frame than the workhorse LHT. Ohh the dreams of n+1.

I'm sort of confused why mountain bikes went 1x first before road bikes.

The gear range needed for MTB's (and touring bikes and hybrids) is very wide and thus favors triples, even if they're finicky. 3x9 systems have, effectively, 13 well-spaced ratios. You hang out in the middle ring most of the time and if you need to go to the high or low range it's a nice double shift. The 2x systems by comparison have a huge awkward 4-step jump between the big and small ring, and they are often cross chained, because the middle ring is missing. I suppose the idea is to hang out in the top ring til you really need the granny. The 1x11 systems don't cover the range so they just outright sacrifice two or three ratios - whether on top or bottom depending on your chainring choice.

By comparison on the road, a single 44 ring with an 11-N cassette compares very favorably to a 2x7 system, and beats the snot out of a 2x5 system.

the 10 to 42 t cassettes SRAM made for XC race trained competitors is not for your average rider

their cassette alone, is a whole Trek 850 Bike in cost to replace.

Probably due to institutional memory. Cassettes started out slim and gradually expanded to today's 10s and 11s. No one every decided to go back to the drawing board reinvent the entire drive train. The MTB designers were probably less attached the old ways.

For me it really just depends, at least three of my commuters are single chainring affairs, one of those is 1x7, one is fixed, and one is single speed. There's minor hills on my commute but my go to is still often my fixed gear, despite the fact that it is a true track bike frameset.. but I find with my 48x16 or it might be 15, I forget.. it's more then adequate to get me up the minor hills, which for me means when I'm using my 1x7 drivetrain bike it's really almost like cheating when I go up the hills, it's not like most of us are cycling gods either so in theory our range needs shouldn't be that huge.

Just an example...

My Super Sport with 630-32 tires has a 5x14-32 freewheel and 40-52 rings for a range of six ratios from 34" to 102". The ring shift isn't quite matched to the freewheel steps.

A hypothetical 1x8 road bike with 622-28 tires has an 11-32 cassette and a single 42t ring for a range of eight ratios from 35" to 102". You have a choice between a Shimano cassette with even shifts or a SRAM cassette with tight-high and wide-low shift spacing.

I have a single chain-ring (really a toothed belt pulley) going into a NuVinci 360. It is great, no drive-train maintenance, no chain problems, no pant eating chain at all. For a commuting only bike it is a great way to go.

For me, it was a matter of simplicity and aesthetics -- not so much for looks but just the psychology of having less stuff on the bike. But it may also be that among the commuter crowd, there are a lot more "put together" bikes, and a 1x rig simply involves less putting together. For instance when I switched to upright bars on my fun bike, I had the choice of moving two shifters up from the downtubes, or just one. When I got the rear shifter wired up, I really wanted to get on and ride, not spend more time in the garage.

Today both my bikes are 1x3 with old IGH's. So far as gearing is concerned, I find that a 42/19 ratio, using the smaller ring from the old road bike, is "just right" for my commute with moderate but not insane hills. My low gear is close to the typical low gear on a road bike, equivalent to roughly 42/25, so it's not absurd to think about getting up hills with it. On downhills, well, I can live with the indignity of coasting when I run out of cadence.

One thought about gear range: Many of us can probably live with a small fraction of the gears found on a typical modern bike, but the question is which gears. It depends on so many things, such as your terrain, physique, etc., that it makes sense for bike makers to offer a wide range of gears that can accommodate pretty much everybody. But in the commuting situation, where the terrain is the same every day, you can narrow things down.

1 x n drive trains are probably the most pragmatic, especially for commuting. My prime commuter and dirt road bike has a 36 t chain ring with 9 speed 12-36 cassette. Road bike has 39 t chain ring with 11-36 10 speed. For utility riding, with 32x622 tire, 39 t chain ring and 12-36 9 spd cassette - is about optimal drive train set up.

It just struck me that one of the additional benefits of a 1xn is the ability to use a chain guard to protect your pants.