Goodyear Transit Speed S3 Tyre

Goodyear's Transit Speed S3 tyres are a sensible choice for your round-town bike, with decent levels of grip and puncture resistance and handy reflective sidewalls for night-time visibility.

• Pros: Good puncture resistance, decent grip
• Cons: Relatively slow, slightly harsh ride

It has to be admitted that it's hard to get excited about utility tyres, but Goodyear has done a good job with the Transit Speeds (or to be precise Rubber Kinetics, which licenses the Goodyear name for bicycle tyres, has done said good job).

The road and path surfaces I ride to and from work every day have been deeply crappy in the last couple of weeks. Rain and falling leaves have made them, erm, interesting, even for someone with a couple of decades of mountain biking that's left me reasonably comfortable on less-grippy stuff. The Transit Speeds have been surefooted through it all. I haven't taken any particular risks, but in those moments where a patch of path-edge gack has been unavoidable, they've been steady.

I'm a big fan of reflective sidewalls on tyres, because a pair of hoops in the headlights says 'bike!' really strongly. Yes, your driver has to be actually looking for reflectives to do any good, but I've no issue with giving drivers who are paying attention a bit of help seeing me. It's ones glued to their phones who can get in the sea.

If I mention that I haven't had any punctures, that'll draw the attention of the Puncture Gremlins and I'll get one on the way home, so I won't, especially as a few weeks' commuting is too little to really draw a conclusion. But I will mention that the Transit Speed's S3.Shell puncture prevention – a 3mm band of rubber between tread and carcass – is roughly equivalent to that of the doyen of commuting tyres, the Schwalbe Marathon, but not quite as thick as the Marathon Plus's 5mm SmartGuard rubber layer or Goodyear's own 5mm-thick S5.Shell, which is part of the beefiest version of the Transit Speed.

Those are the tyres you'd go for if puncture prevention was your only criterion for choosing a tyre, but the 3mm layer here is going to ward off most shards and flints without making the tyre ridiculously slow and heavy.

Because, if there's one thing the Transit Speed S3 tyres are not, it's fast. They're noticeably slower than the Schwalbe Marathon Supremes that my town bike previously wore. That's not very surprising, as Marathon Supremes are among the fastest tyres that still offer a good level of puncture resistance. That 3mm of aramid-infused rubber under the tread of the Transit Speeds makes them significantly more resistant to punctures, but unavoidably stiffens the carcass where it has to flex to meet the road, and that pushes up the rolling resistance.

For round-town riding and commuting up to say 10km or so, this doesn't matter. You might be a bit slower getting to work, but that's a reasonable trade-off against the sheer inconvenience of having to change a tube in the rain halfway to work, and getting your hands covered in that lovely mixture of diesel and car tyre particulates that inevitably coats the tyres of urban bikes.

On the other hand, the Transit Speed S3's stiff sidewalls and this under-tread layer do combine to make the ride a bit buzzier than you get with more supple tyres. If your town bike can accommodate them, you might want to go for the 40mm Transit Speed instead of this 35mm version so you can compensate by running them a bit softer.

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Price-wise they hold their own: at RRP a Schwalbe Marathon is £31.99, a Continental Touring Plus is £34.95 and a Michelin ProTek Max is £26.99, so at £29 they're right in the ballpark.

Overall, the Goodyear Transit Speed S3s are a solid choice as round-town rubber. They don't excel in any particular department, but they've a pleasing balance of features.

Verdict

Credible round-town rubber with good balance of grip and flat-resistance