There’s still time to shift gears. Last month, Mayor Olivia Chow was successful with a surprise motion to get Toronto council to disband the TPA board. Gone are the lawyers, economists and accountants. In their place is an interim board made up entirely of city hall staffers like city manager Paul Johnson.

Common Chow W

That includes “new revenue streams” like “loyalty programs, digital advertising networks, feature upsells, and advanced reservations.” It reads like a road map that could easily lead to what the tech writer Cory Doctorow has colourfully called “enshittification” — the process whereby online platforms and services decline over time as they change from focusing on what benefits users to what benefits their bottom line.

Let’s break this down.

1. First, that’s not what Cory Doctorow called enshittification. I’m not going to hammer you if you colloquially use it that way, but if you’re publishing an article and going to ascribe it directly to Cory Doctorow’s writings, then you should be accurate. He was writing specifically about the dynamics of two sided marketplaces like App Stores / Uber / etc, where you have an app marketplace in the middle of consumers and businesses, and how that leads to exploitation of both sides. And notably, Toronto Bike Share program is decidedly not a two sided marketplace, in any way shape or form.

Now let’s look at the new scary revenue streams:

2. loyalty programs & digital advertising programs - both are both relatively harmless. Not ideal, but funding a public service is the best possible use for advertising revenue, so having some ads in the app is not the end of the world. And charging more for a membership tier that gives you bullshit Cineplex deals and stuff feels like a real non issue. That’s probably more aimed at getting more money out of corporations that buy those passes for employees.

3. advanced reservations - they’re made out to be scary boogermen, but again, are not a big deal if done right. The article acts like advanced reservations are going to be used instead of having enough bikes, but I don’t see how those are related. If anything allowing advanced reservations will mean more bikes are tied up more often, creating more pressure for bikes and racks. And it would be very nice to be able to reserve a bike for short periods, like when you’re leaving the house and walking over to it. If it’s the last bike available you may decide to not risk it, or do and get there and it’s gone, and now you have to walk several blocks back to the streetcar stop. Or it would be nice to be able to reserve a bike whole you’re in a store so you don’t come out and it’s gone. Or reserving one days ahead of time and having Bike Share ensure ones at the rack for you at that time. There’s a broad spectrum of possibilities here from exploitatively profitable, to loss leading, to charging reasonable amounts for an extra service.

4. feature upsells - pretty vague assuming this doesn’t include e-bikes. All I can imagine is a plan to have cargo bikes or multi person bikes, etc. It’s pure speculation but so is the author’s doom and gloom scenario.

The author’s claims that because the Bike Share subsidy is less then the TTC’s subsidy that means that every bike share costs the city less, is also nonsense. Even for the ones that displace TTC rides, the city still needs to run those buses and subways, which is why the per rider subsidy goes down as the number of transit riders goes up. This is just a truly nonsensical point to try and make.

Honestly it’s worth watching what the TPA actually does, but it really sounds like the author is complaining about one part their own speculation, and two parts the directives that city hall gives it. If city hall wants to make it a public amenity that charges nothing, then they can, if they want to try and make it revenue neutral, or even profit generating, they can, but that’s not really on TPA, the board will follow the city’s broad direction, or they’ll get replaced with people who will … by nature of being a city owned entity.