10 ms·

The award of the contract for the outdoor advertising space (bus shelters, roadside space) in my city was tied to providing and maintaining a cheap metro-area w

The award of the contract for the outdoor advertising space (bus shelters, roadside space) in my city was tied to providing and maintaining a cheap metro-area wide bike sharing scheme. For 30ish euros a year I get unlimited 45 minute trips on bikes that are widely available, well maintained, and easy to use. In 2022 there were more than 10 million trips taken on these hire bikes and nearly 84,000 annual subscribers. This bike share scheme is only possible because the city traded away its outdoor ad space. There's not more ads, just a monopoly on who sells the space to advertisers. The city might be prettier without the advertisements but it seems a good trade off to be removing vehicles from the road and promoting healthy transport via the bike scheme.

juanpicardo 3y ago
it is absolutely possible to achieve the same without ads. your city simply does not want to do it.
k__ 3y ago
This is cool! They should force restaurants at public places to provide places to sit, even if you don't buy anything. Instead, they do crap like anti-homeless spikes...
polonbike 3y ago
I guess you live in Lyon, France, same as I do. Even if I despite the ads, the bike sharing deal is quite good for users and the city.
amadeuspagel 3y ago
It's not a good trade, there shouldn't be a monopoly on public ads, local businesses should be able to reach consumers without having to go through a monopolist that captures all of the value.
- ponector 3y ago
  The alternative is to not have a cheap popular bikeshare system. Also with monopolist it is really easy to keep some standards, quality of the ads.
  - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
    False dichotomy. The alternative is to have a cheap popular bikeshare system supported by taxes. [Edit to reply to okr, because I'm rate-limited: Well, then, make the users of the bikes pay the full cost of the bike service. As it is, you're pushing ads in everyone's face, whether or not they use the bike. Also no thanks.]
    - okr 3y ago
      So, instead of paying my money for a bike as a choice, a monopolist takes money from everyone. Very funny, but no thanks, i take Ads anytime over that.
      - j_maffe 3y ago
        The collective community ends up paying a lot more in quality of life with these ads up. Also, ads are the primary way to get the lower economic classes to give their money to the rich.
        okr 3y ago
        You give money to get goods. What is wrong about that?
        AnimalMuppet 3y ago
        You give money you can't really afford to give in order to get goods that you don't really need. You do so because advertisers are skilled professionals, and are better at manipulating you than you are at not being manipulated. And they have put themselves in places where you cannot help but see them. That's what's wrong about that.
        JAlexoid 3y ago
        This has little to do with advertising. Consumer sentiment will be shaped by media other than advertising. You watching Instagram of people drinking alcohol and (seemingly) having fun will make you want to drink alcohol. Ads for a particular type of alcohol will only steer your selection of product, but do not induce a desire to get it.
- JambalayaJim 3y ago
  Local businesses would benefit substantially from the bikeshare service though.
  - amadeuspagel 3y ago
    Not if that bikeshare service captures all their profits by having a monopoly on ads.
    - JambalayaJim 3y ago
      That makes no sense. Most local businesses don’t even have ads on bus stops. Let alone that being where most of their profits are invested???
- docdeek 3y ago
  The ad space exists and the city owns all the ad space. They either get in the business of pricing it and selling it themselves, or they contract that business out. In this case, a condition of the contract was you have to pay for the bike scheme.
  - Espressosaurus 3y ago
    So the possibility that the space remains ad-free doesn't exist? Everything is a choice, we don't HAVE to accept these shitty ads everywhere.
    - cheriot 3y ago
      > This bike share scheme is only possible because the city traded away its outdoor ad space. Yes, it's a trade off. I wish my city had free bike share.
    - celestialcheese 3y ago
      > So the possibility that the space remains ad-free doesn't exist? It does exist, but then the cost of the bike sharing would have be borne by a) users of the bike system - this would impact ridership and equity of access. b) local govt - budget would have to come from somewhere. considering b) would likely mean that the project wouldn't get past planning, really a) is the only alternative. Everything is a tradeoff. From my perspective, I'll take shitty ads if the money earned from those ads is spent on significant quality of life improvements. Same reason I support legalization and taxation of gambling, drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, etc where the revenues pay for schools, social services, etc.
      - Y_Y 3y ago
        This is shitty equity too though, I can't ride bikes but I still have to look at your ads and make do with worse economies of scale for public transportation that's accesible to the disabled. If bike share is a public good. It should be paid for out of public funds, if the city decides to sell advertising rights in public spaces then it can. Those two ideas need not be linked, money is fungible!
- twosdai 3y ago
  I mean this appears to be a similar model as a utility. Right? Basically a legal monopoly with a set of restrictions. I don't see how it's really a bad thing.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
tclancy 3y ago
>This bike share scheme is only possible because the city traded away its outdoor ad space. I get what you mean, but arguments like this confuse the underlying issue of how we value and price things. It's certainly not "only possible" that way. It makes me think of the Mark Fisher line “It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”
croisillon 3y ago
it feels like 1 in 3 cyclists is riding a Vélo'v, Lyon is a very nice city
franga2000 3y ago
We have something similar and it was a terrible deal. The city still had to pay a boatload of money to set up the system, but it's proprietary so we can only "buy" more stations and bikes from the same company. They, of course, refuse to sell at a reasonable price, so for every new station, more ad space is created and given to them. The term of the contract, which is 25 years, is also insanely long and far longer than the maximum we allow for such contracts normally (5 or 10 years). And I won't even go into the corruption that got them the tender in the first place... Fuck JCDecaux!
- dantyti 3y ago
  The same thing in my city with jcd bikes: no new stations in a decade, only a handful of bikes available, bike stop density nowhere near anything I've seen in a large city in Southern France. Meanwhile, every bus stop, every street corner or prominent billboard is owned by jcd. Your comment has encouraged me to dig up anything I can find about our municipality's contracts with jcd during the upcoming holiday break and, if it's anything like what you've said, raise some awareness.
  - franga2000 3y ago
    I've been meaning to do the same. I'm currently trying to get information on the number of billboards and when they were put up through FOIA requests so I can run some numbers and I already made some interesting visualizations of how badly the stops are located from JCDecaux's API. Our capital got these bikes 10 years before us and had similar issues. A small news outlet made a pretty good report on the "secret costs of city bikes" and that's kind of what I'm going for: https://podcrto.si/skrita-cena-izposoje-koles-v-ljubljani-oglasni-plakati-na-vsakem-koraku/ https://podcrto.si/skrita-cena-izposoje-koles-v-ljubljani-og...
zamadatix 3y ago
I wonder how much this bike contract actually takes to maintain vs how much the holder gets in advertisements. Even if near flat even, which feels unlikely as why bother holding the contract then, it's still a way with more overhead than just funding the bike program.
rustcleaner 3y ago
[dead]
H8crilA 3y ago
> This bike share scheme is only possible because the city traded away its outdoor ad space. No, there are many ways to generate revenue to pay for things like that at a (local) government level. Your city sold the ad space and immediately bought an essentially unrelated service (bike sharing) from the same party.
- jefftk 3y ago
  > immediately bought an essentially unrelated service At least the way it works here (Boston area's Bluebikes) is that the same infrastructure supports both the bike sharing and the ad space. There are ads on the bikes and their docks.

juanpicardo 3y ago

it is absolutely possible to achieve the same without ads. your city simply does not want to do it.

k__ 3y ago

This is cool! They should force restaurants at public places to provide places to sit, even if you don't buy anything. Instead, they do crap like anti-homeless spikes...

polonbike 3y ago

I guess you live in Lyon, France, same as I do. Even if I despite the ads, the bike sharing deal is quite good for users and the city.

amadeuspagel 3y ago

It's not a good trade, there shouldn't be a monopoly on public ads, local businesses should be able to reach consumers without having to go through a monopolist that captures all of the value.

ponector 3y ago
The alternative is to not have a cheap popular bikeshare system. Also with monopolist it is really easy to keep some standards, quality of the ads.
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago
  False dichotomy. The alternative is to have a cheap popular bikeshare system supported by taxes. [Edit to reply to okr, because I'm rate-limited: Well, then, make the users of the bikes pay the full cost of the bike service. As it is, you're pushing ads in everyone's face, whether or not they use the bike. Also no thanks.]
  - okr 3y ago
    So, instead of paying my money for a bike as a choice, a monopolist takes money from everyone. Very funny, but no thanks, i take Ads anytime over that.
    - j_maffe 3y ago
      The collective community ends up paying a lot more in quality of life with these ads up. Also, ads are the primary way to get the lower economic classes to give their money to the rich.
      - okr 3y ago
        You give money to get goods. What is wrong about that?
        AnimalMuppet 3y ago
        You give money you can't really afford to give in order to get goods that you don't really need. You do so because advertisers are skilled professionals, and are better at manipulating you than you are at not being manipulated. And they have put themselves in places where you cannot help but see them. That's what's wrong about that.
        JAlexoid 3y ago
        This has little to do with advertising. Consumer sentiment will be shaped by media other than advertising. You watching Instagram of people drinking alcohol and (seemingly) having fun will make you want to drink alcohol. Ads for a particular type of alcohol will only steer your selection of product, but do not induce a desire to get it.
JambalayaJim 3y ago
Local businesses would benefit substantially from the bikeshare service though.
- amadeuspagel 3y ago
  Not if that bikeshare service captures all their profits by having a monopoly on ads.
  - JambalayaJim 3y ago
    That makes no sense. Most local businesses don’t even have ads on bus stops. Let alone that being where most of their profits are invested???
docdeek 3y ago
The ad space exists and the city owns all the ad space. They either get in the business of pricing it and selling it themselves, or they contract that business out. In this case, a condition of the contract was you have to pay for the bike scheme.
- Espressosaurus 3y ago
  So the possibility that the space remains ad-free doesn't exist? Everything is a choice, we don't HAVE to accept these shitty ads everywhere.
  - cheriot 3y ago
    > This bike share scheme is only possible because the city traded away its outdoor ad space. Yes, it's a trade off. I wish my city had free bike share.
  - celestialcheese 3y ago
    > So the possibility that the space remains ad-free doesn't exist? It does exist, but then the cost of the bike sharing would have be borne by a) users of the bike system - this would impact ridership and equity of access. b) local govt - budget would have to come from somewhere. considering b) would likely mean that the project wouldn't get past planning, really a) is the only alternative. Everything is a tradeoff. From my perspective, I'll take shitty ads if the money earned from those ads is spent on significant quality of life improvements. Same reason I support legalization and taxation of gambling, drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, etc where the revenues pay for schools, social services, etc.
    - Y_Y 3y ago
      This is shitty equity too though, I can't ride bikes but I still have to look at your ads and make do with worse economies of scale for public transportation that's accesible to the disabled. If bike share is a public good. It should be paid for out of public funds, if the city decides to sell advertising rights in public spaces then it can. Those two ideas need not be linked, money is fungible!
twosdai 3y ago
I mean this appears to be a similar model as a utility. Right? Basically a legal monopoly with a set of restrictions. I don't see how it's really a bad thing.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

tclancy 3y ago

>This bike share scheme is only possible because the city traded away its outdoor ad space. I get what you mean, but arguments like this confuse the underlying issue of how we value and price things. It's certainly not "only possible" that way. It makes me think of the Mark Fisher line “It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”

croisillon 3y ago

it feels like 1 in 3 cyclists is riding a Vélo'v, Lyon is a very nice city

franga2000 3y ago

We have something similar and it was a terrible deal. The city still had to pay a boatload of money to set up the system, but it's proprietary so we can only "buy" more stations and bikes from the same company. They, of course, refuse to sell at a reasonable price, so for every new station, more ad space is created and given to them. The term of the contract, which is 25 years, is also insanely long and far longer than the maximum we allow for such contracts normally (5 or 10 years). And I won't even go into the corruption that got them the tender in the first place... Fuck JCDecaux!

dantyti 3y ago
The same thing in my city with jcd bikes: no new stations in a decade, only a handful of bikes available, bike stop density nowhere near anything I've seen in a large city in Southern France. Meanwhile, every bus stop, every street corner or prominent billboard is owned by jcd. Your comment has encouraged me to dig up anything I can find about our municipality's contracts with jcd during the upcoming holiday break and, if it's anything like what you've said, raise some awareness.
- franga2000 3y ago
  I've been meaning to do the same. I'm currently trying to get information on the number of billboards and when they were put up through FOIA requests so I can run some numbers and I already made some interesting visualizations of how badly the stops are located from JCDecaux's API. Our capital got these bikes 10 years before us and had similar issues. A small news outlet made a pretty good report on the "secret costs of city bikes" and that's kind of what I'm going for: https://podcrto.si/skrita-cena-izposoje-koles-v-ljubljani-oglasni-plakati-na-vsakem-koraku/ https://podcrto.si/skrita-cena-izposoje-koles-v-ljubljani-og...

zamadatix 3y ago

I wonder how much this bike contract actually takes to maintain vs how much the holder gets in advertisements. Even if near flat even, which feels unlikely as why bother holding the contract then, it's still a way with more overhead than just funding the bike program.

rustcleaner 3y ago

[dead]

H8crilA 3y ago

> This bike share scheme is only possible because the city traded away its outdoor ad space. No, there are many ways to generate revenue to pay for things like that at a (local) government level. Your city sold the ad space and immediately bought an essentially unrelated service (bike sharing) from the same party.

jefftk 3y ago
> immediately bought an essentially unrelated service At least the way it works here (Boston area's Bluebikes) is that the same infrastructure supports both the bike sharing and the ad space. There are ads on the bikes and their docks.