Bus lane blockers! - photo by @bustration

When government agencies first started to put up web sites in the 1990s, management tended to treat them as little more than electronic brochures. Typically, no one in authority bothered to respond to e-mails. I hope that agencies today aren’t making the same mistakes with social media.

Social media is a rich source of ‘intelligence’ for consumers, business and, not least, policy-makers and implementers. There’s an extraordinarily valuable and growing pile of information out there in the ether. Public agencies and private providers should be mining it like robber barons!

I follow the tweets of bus driver, @bustration, who records the tribulations – and the occasional delights – of life on the road. She drives in Melbourne, but what she sees is bound to be true of most places. Here are some of her tweets from the driver’s seat for three days this week (16th – 18th) on the topic of cars in priority lanes:

XPZ372 THP041 SGM740 WHV378 blocking bus lanes George St

YBL657 WGT124 blocking clearway Clow St Dandy

Tow away job http://twitpic.com/4ychje

2 more bus lane parkers Dandenong http://twitpic.com/4ychw4

Catch 22 tow truck blocks clearway Clow http://twitpic.com/4ycqr4

Blocking Clow st http://twitpic.com/4yr9ea

Blocking Walker st http://twitpic.com/4yr9y2

CUD954 OCS367 WHB316 XHY707 RLY829 first 5 Blockers of dozens

Dandy BL Blockers http://twitpic.com/4z5p3t

Tow em Danno! http://twitpic.com/4z5pis

Hmmm, is @bustration simply unlucky? Perhaps she’s just a glass half-full sort of a person? Or are her observations highly suggestive evidence that there’s a very serious problem with enforcing the rules on priority lanes? It’s odd how as a society we’ll spend billions in capital but then skint on making sure it can deliver to specification.

@bustration’s frustrations are an example of how smartphones and Twitter have lowered the costs of monitoring and information collection. Perhaps right now someone is building a ‘name and shame’ web site where disgruntled travellers can share pics of priority lane parkers. Or maybe somewhere in government there’re Twitter Analysts who’re already on to it!

Here is a selection of more @bustration’s tweets from earlier in May (I’ve selected from those that relate to public transport – there’re other tweets on less gloomy topics):

Rock throwers at south morang again.

901 bus smashd again at sth morang by rock throwers. Replacement on way. 2 in a row now

Might have to warn pax of possible missile attacks when they ride thru Sth Morang

New KFC Rowville removed their outside bins. Mega Shitstrewn bus stops from Maccas + Colonel!

Atlanta teen shot after throwing rocks at passing cars http://bit.ly/kBPHaC - Kids at South Morang Skate Park please read.

Well signed Dandenong peak hour bus lanes + clearways full of cars again.

Another peak hour, another day with buslanes + clearways full of parked cars.

Bus Drivers can easily see the PID at Oakleigh Some (like me) wait a few minutes if they see train is “NOW” or about to arrived.

URS-511 Small 4WD shining laser into bus driver’s eyes McDonalds Rd Sth Morang.

Chromers on bus making me sick

PT Problem of the Day: who makes sure it’s just buses in the bus lanes? No one. It is an ongoing problem.

sigh so jealous http://www.rta.nsw.gov.au/usingroads/buses/buslane_cameras.html

bus driver assaulted this morning, sent home, Ops having trouble replacing him.

Changeover driver AWOL !

Man defecating at bus stop. Loaded pax + drove off before he got his strides up!

Doesn’t look like life out on the streets is always pleasant. Hopefully intelligence about rock throwers is instantly passed onto police and acted on urgently. The sort of information in these tweets has strategic value, ranging across public security, coordination of modes and the integrity of priority lanes. If the experiences of bus drivers – and possibly other select groups – could be collected routinely with some semblance of scientific rigour it could be very useful information for government agencies and private operators.

The geography of surnames in the US (click)

In an interesting article on Crikey, Guy Rundle riffs off the Borders bankruptcy to ask if technological change will inevitably destroy local strip shopping centres:

The whole centrality of the shop is changing. It is no longer a necessary place, and so the high street no longer acts as the spatial core of a community. At some point a whole series of mainstream shops will succumb to insufficient, intermittent demand. Everyone will want to know they are there, but no-one will use them enough.

Whether Borders succumbed to poor management, competition from e-commerce, the dead hand of the parallel importing restrictions, or the fall-off in consumer spending, there’s no question that the nature of shopping is changing profoundly.

For example, I bought my first lot of ten novels from Amazon back in 1994 and have purchased many more books from various on-line retailers since. Whenever I have the option, I now download e-books to read on my e-reader in preference to hard copies.

I started home-banking in 1994 and now visit the bank maybe four times a year max (I hate being paid by cheque!). My wife and I have bought so much stuff on eBay we have Turquoise Star status. The household increasingly downloads movies via T-Box rather than hire DVDs and all our music is purchased through iTunes. We book our travel on-line and even negotiated the purchase of a car over the net.

Guy Rundle foresees that these sorts of changes will extend to the local supermarket and beyond, driven by improvements in on-line ordering and home delivery. I expect that once the public has confidence the problems with e-commerce – like affordable and secure home delivery and safe payment systems – have been overcome, many people will surely choose to use their time for higher value activities than routine consumer shopping.

Mr Rundle fears that if the boring but essential services like supermarkets are lost to the high street, then specialist stores like bookshops that rely on passing trade from ‘anchor tenants’ will also go under. He says:

The wider question, in terms of future life, is how we will sustain any form of public spatial life at all – as the last shared, necessary space dissolves

I don’t think the high street is in any imminent danger. It’s likely to change but I doubt it will die. Not all the changes will necessarily be bad.

I know shopping is supposed to be ‘experiential’ and an end in itself, but no matter how marketers trick it up, it’s still essentially about consumption. After the 100^th trip the glamour of the supermarket fades and there’re only so many times I can browse Borders or my local bookstore (I still have one!) before it becomes repetitive.

Some people will regret the decline in opportunities for incidental meetings that might follow if high street shops were to start closing. That’s one way to look at it, although I think it’s a little romantic – the personable grocer was replaced by the Coles cashier a long ago.

An alternative perspective is that a large-scale shift to on-line shopping would save precious time. That time could be devoted to more frequent  enriching exchanges with people one is intimately connected with, like family and friends.

To some extent we will continue to be drawn to the high street by activities that can’t easily be accessed on-line. Visiting health-related services is one such activity and personal services like hair dressing are another. Some clothes and some bodies require a personal fitting and the appearance of jewellery might be hard to convey on a screen. Some people will always want to eyeball the fruit and vegetables before they buy even if most of us are prepared to rely on a trusted (and probably more skilled) supplier.

But I think the key reason we’ll continue to patronise the high street is to meet with other people, mostly those we already know, like family, friends and business colleagues. This is much deeper than incidental contacts – this is actually engaging with other people.

There will be a continuing demand for places to meet, especially restaurants and bars. Households have been out-sourcing more and more of their food supply for decades. While they can always get food home-delivered, dining is a social activity that increasingly includes people from beyond the immediate household.

There’s some research on whether or not improvements in communications technology will replace the need for face-to-face contact. An interesting finding is that rather than substituting for it, the new technologies seem to increase the demand for face-to-face contact. Mobile phones, SMS, instant messaging, Facebook and e-mail make it easier to communicate with others and thus to set up opportunities to meet in person.

Some of that increase in face-to-face contact will take place in the home, but the last 50 years suggest much of it will be in the public domain. There will also still be plenty of scope for incidental meetings with acquaintances and strangers as we stroll along the high street to our favourite restaurant or bar, but the real value will be enriching and affirming relationships with people with whom we have a deeper connection.

P.S. I first used an ATM circa 1980 – at the North Sydney branch of the CBC bank. There was a limit of around $30 and there was only one machine. It was essentially a way of getting cash after hours.