Single gear bike - where/which model?

Johnmcl7

It's nothing to do with the difficulty of setting up, in most cases it's easier with derailleur gearing as you can buy the bike like that whereas there's few single speed choices. Derailleurs can and do fail (tyres, bottom brackets and rear derailleur system failures, particularly the mech hanger are the most common failures on rides) which disables the bike and even the quick fix of shortening the chain isn't that quick and for most bikes without sliding dropouts or an eccentric bottom bracket means the chain can't be tensioned properly. Quicklinks won't help that much either as you'll still need a chain breaker.

It's also a wear and tear part so for every day town bikes it makes them cheaper to maintain, for those doing bigger miles, single speed means less chance of getting stuck in the middle of nowhere and for those endurance racing (it's not unusual to see single speed rigid bikes on the podium for solo riders) it's one less part to fail and cripple the bike.

John