The main thing this article is talking about is supermarkets in the UK that lock all their sale offers behind the loyalty card. Until about a year or two ago, you could go in and buy things on sale or buy one get one free or whatever offer, and then use (or don’t use) your loyalty card on top (to collect/spend points), but now you don’t get any discounts if you don’t have a loyalty card.
The article/campaigners are spinning this up into something about smartphones, because that’s how most people use these loyalty schemes now, but they still have the old style cards so that’s a bit of a red herring. The real issue is the way they’re tying their standard offers to the loyalty program, and making it more difficult for consumers not to get caught out paying full price.
Nah it would have cost the city the same regardless, you’re just talking about how much the civils business pays its workers.
Most likely this would have been part of a larger project of installing cycle lanes in various places. But it still would have been expensive, civil contractors are notorious.