Reflections on a bus fire and the fragility of modern complex systems

"There's been a fire on a bus." I jumped.

Thursday evening I had got away from work reasonably early with the aim of doing some writing. I had been standing at the bus stop at Central, Sydney's main railway station, for over twenty minutes and had not seen a single 343 bus. It's not unusual to see the buses overcrowded to the point they cannot stop, but not to see one at all is unusual.

Under the newish bus timetable, the 343 begins its journey at Chatswood in Sydney's North Shore. From there it travels down the main drag and across Sydney Harbour Bridge before wending its way through the city to Central. At peak hour, the 343 is always over crowded by Central because it is the main bus for Apartment Central, the Green Square/Victoria Park development. The buses are generally older because the more modern people movers can't get past the narrow streets and round-abouts along the 343 route. Even the 343 buses have to stop sometimes, to move slowly, even to back up, to get past some of the corners.

I turned to the person who had spoken : "What's happened? A bus caught fire on the Bridge", she responded. "The buses aren't running."  I knew at once what was happening, even assumed that it was a 343 that had caught fire. I caught a bus that was running and then tracked back to home. It was well after seven before I got there, twelve hours since leaving for work, over fourteen hours since rising. I cleaned and cooked a meal. After a few glasses of wine while cooking I no longer felt like doing anything, I knew Friday was a heavy day, I had to be up early, so really all I wanted to do was to go to bed.

That started me reflecting. Working in Canberra or then in Armidale, the shorter travel times made so much more time available. Life was more flexible, too. If you had to go back to the office to spend a few hours catching up, you did so. That's not practical if three hours at the office requires 3+ hours travel time. There is also an age factor. To meet demands, the young Jim could simply deduct time from sleep and then catch up. This is not quite as easy for the older Jim. I am trying to squeeze a lot of things into reduced time after travel and I just get tired.

But the thing that really stood out in my mind was the reminder of just how fragile and interdependent life had become. We have become system dependent. That bus fire disrupted the lives of more than a million commuters. It was a major event. The just in time world we live in means that our lives are dependent on complex systems to allow us to function. Because those systems are generally efficient and make it easy for us to do things we use them heavily, letting alternatives atrophy and finally die. The problem is that if one thing goes wrong anywhere in one of the complex interacting systems, the costs can vary from annoying to catastrophic.

I don't have an answer, but I think that we need to pause a little and think.

During the week, I was working on a funding proposal. As systems become more centralised and internet dependent, an increasing number of people no longer have real access. It may be that they are functionally illiterate. It maybe that they are not computer literate. It maybe that they do not have on-line access either because they do not have a computer or access to a computer or access to the necessary bandwidth.

It's not just a question of basic access, but also navigating the way through the increasing volume of evidential material now demanded for so many things. I am reasonably bright, I am certainly computer literate, but I struggle sometimes. Often, there is no one to help. The call centre has become a source of frustrated modern jokes.

The question I was addressing in the funding proposal was how to help.a particular group cope in this world. As I worked my way through the issues, I was conscious of a sense of frustration. You can't say to government or indeed to firms, mate, you have got it wrong, you have to change. More precisely, you can say it, but it will get you nowhere. So you have to work out what might help, recognising that it is at best a band-aid, unlikely to be sustainable in the longer term because, in the end, it depends on funding from government or donors. The gains that come from our new systems are measurable, can be internalised, while the costs are often not.

At a purely personal level, I reminded myself last night of the need to make myself less system dependent no matter how convenient the system maybe. The rub is that this takes focus and time, both things difficult in an increasingly time poor world.

Consider the question of cash. Like many, I now carry very little in my wallet. It's just so easy to wave and go. Now they are talking about abolishing physical cash entirely, making us all dependent on electronic money.

A week back, I went into a store. I wanted to buy something quickly, but their EFTPOS was down. I haven't tracked our many many major electronic outages there have been in the payments system over the last six months, certainly more than a half a dozen. A few years ago, the cable to a Victorian country town was cut and could not be repaired quickly. The whole town and surrounding countryside ground to a halt because nobody could buy petrol or food, farm supplies or building materials.

There are major pluses in carrying cash. You can buy things when the system is down. Big brother cannot track your purchases via data mining. It's easier to control your spend. And yet, the cashless equivalent is so seductive and convenient, at least until something goes wrong. It takes an additional effort to drop out.  

So perhaps my first step is to go back to cash, at least in part. It won't make the 343 come more quickly or be less crowded. It won't stop problems from a bus fire. But it will make me a little less dependent on complex systems that can and will go wrong.