Red, Green and Blue reports that a bus company is challenging a ridesharing service called PickupPal in a regulatory battle in Canada saying PickupPal represents unfair competition. Read more here.
In reading further on PickuPal’s blog, I find that Ontario has incredibly restrictive carpooling regulations. Carpooling regulations!? Who knew carpooling was regulated, I mean like anywhere. In these regulations, it seems you’re only allowed to carpool to work, can’t cross municipal boundaries, and more seeming nonsense.
Wow, these regulations have really cut off citizen’s ability to serve themselves. Well, PickupPal is trying to change the regulations, though there’s undoubtedly another side to this story.
For instance, if ridesharing displaced enough business to cause the bus system to fail, then what about the folks who rely on regular bus service to get to and from work and have no affordable alternatives? I wonder if ridesharing could provide enough regularity to serve bus dependent folks for their work-related transportation needs.
While I support citizens creating, protecting, and responsibly using commons of all sorts, this may not be a cut and dried issue. Both systems represent a sort of commons. The issue would be more clear to me if one these companies was owned and democratically controlled by citizens through a cooperative. I would support the citizen effort as long as it worked well.
As it is, both companies appear to be privately owned. It would be easy to criticize the bus company for what appears to be a dubious claim of “unfair competition” against a popular effort by PickupPal. But let’s not ignore the fact that PickupPal is a private company that seeks to exploit the labor of ordinary citizens to create a valuable commons which it will own exclusively.
