[the.miler]

I believe you can be highly competitive going single speed. If you accelerate quickly and manuever well, you can slip by defenders. You can also easily get in the way of others with those same attributes. You can achieve high acceleration, good turning, and sufficient pushing power with a single speed drivetrain.

That isn't to say that shifting isn't useful, but I distinguish between useful and absolutely mission critical. If you would rather reallocate your limited resources to making the stuff on top of your drive base better (I believe this is probably more important), I don't believe that is a bad move. 846 did better single speed than any year we ran shifting.

Your mileage might vary.