Originally Posted by
livedarklions
Just guessing from your name--do you live in San Francisco? If so, you need a big gear range, number of speeds is far secondary to that. I used to ride there in my youth, great flat and hill riding.
Whether number of gears is far secondary to range depends on how a person wants to ride. Gears are about optimizing output, so in a real, practical way, more is better if optimization of effort and speed is the goal. The ideal would be to have infinitely variable gearing within the prescribed range, but that’s a practical impossibility at this time.
If one is willing to trade off optimization for lower cost, or just doesn’t care about optimizing their output, then yeah, maybe even a three speed would work.