Lines Are (Sorta) More Efficient From the End

September 24, 2015 8:58 AM

Danish researchers Trine Tornøe Platz and Lars Peter Østerdal have modeled a counterintuitive queueing system -- the last person to arrive is served first -- and found that it makes the entire process more efficient. The key is telling people that getting there earlier won't mean you're served earlier.

The problem with "first come, first served" is it incentivizes people to arrive early, which researchers say results in people waiting for the longest period of time. When this incentive is removed—under a "last come, first served" system—the queues are more efficient. Researchers suggest that under this model, people are forced to change their behaviors and arrive at the queues at a slower rate. When people who arrive last are served first, there is less of a bottleneck and thus less congestion in queues.

posted by Etrigan (135 comments total)

If you don't model "people give up because who can bother to wait that long" there's a whole bunch of situations where your research is useless.
posted by benito.strauss at 9:02 AM on September 24, 2015 [6 favorites]

What if they run out?

We all want to think that standing in a certain order entitles us to something, but I suspect that this is a deep-seated bit of psychological damage, not a fact.
posted by mhoye at 9:05 AM on September 24, 2015 [9 favorites]

But... won't they run out? What if they run out?

Then the next question is "How efficient are angry riots?"
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:06 AM on September 24, 2015 [43 favorites]

Super efficient because people will come in, someone behind them will get served first, and they will say "Fuck all this" and leave.
posted by Bovine Love at 9:06 AM on September 24, 2015 [27 favorites]

I need to read the study, the article is not very clear as to what is being optimized and under what constraints. I suspect the gains in efficiency come from people who get continuously pushed to the back of the line, and eventually flip out and murder a bunch of late arrivals, thereby reducing the total wait time.
posted by Dr Dracator at 9:08 AM on September 24, 2015 [21 favorites]

Dear every store in the world: One big line being served by multiple cashiers. It's so easy. It baffles me that this isn't standard.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 9:09 AM on September 24, 2015 [61 favorites]

They consider the fistfights to be a feature, not a bug.
posted by sexyrobot at 9:10 AM on September 24, 2015

No no no!

First you develop the app, THEN, you announce to the world that you're disrupting millennia of human history.
 
posted by Herodios at 9:11 AM on September 24, 2015 [9 favorites]

This reminds me of a former boss who used to joke that we'd get so much more work done if it weren't for all the customers.
posted by Celsius1414 at 9:12 AM on September 24, 2015 [4 favorites]

Dear every store in the world: One big line being served by multiple cashiers. It's so easy. It baffles me that this isn't standard.


But then how would I exercise my finely honed skill to choose the fastest line?

Oh wait, choosing that correctly is actually life's biggest mystery to me. Let's do your way.

(The grocery store next to my place of work does this, and it is glorious.)
posted by MCMikeNamara at 9:13 AM on September 24, 2015 [4 favorites]

Celsius1414: "This reminds me of an old boss who used to joke that we'd get so much more work done if it weren't for all the customers."

My undergraduate advisor often said a university without students is like an ointment without flies.
posted by Rock Steady at 9:14 AM on September 24, 2015 [8 favorites]

I've heard similar logic praising drivers who filter traffic by merging at the last possible second for a lane shift. As someone who's punctual and merges early, I have at least a moral objection to both. I definitely want to read the fill article, though.
posted by codacorolla at 9:15 AM on September 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

The math (don't all rush to click this at once).

The experiment, which contains this bit of wisdom: "Our results moreover suggest that people perceive LIFO as the most unfair of the three disciplines although the theoretical results suggest that it is welfare optimal."
posted by notyou at 9:16 AM on September 24, 2015 [5 favorites]

drivers who filter traffic by merging at the last possible second for a lame shift.

Is that what drivers wore before the invention of the Freudian slip?
 
posted by Herodios at 9:18 AM on September 24, 2015 [6 favorites]

I am so, so tired of these "counterintuitive but more efficient!" schemes that "researchers" come up with.

Other examples:

--the claim that it is more efficient for motorists to zip past other cars that have been politely waiting in a long, long line, counting on some weak-willed good Samaritan to let them in so THEY don't have to wait in line like the rest of us did.

--back-in angled parking on super busy streets in Austin, supposedly to solve a problem of cars hitting bikes when they pulled out of spots (but which, upon probing by the local paper, turns out not to have been a problem at all).

Whatever gains these systems offer in efficiency, are outweighed (as someone said above) by the number of people who say "fuck it, I'm out of here," or the emotional toll the unfairness takes on those who've waited patiently.
posted by jayder at 9:19 AM on September 24, 2015 [14 favorites]

This sounds like it would work for minimising overall wait time for circumstances such as opening the first showing of a new Star Wars movie or selling the new iPhone, i.e. where a queue forms and wastes people's time. In that case the increased efficiency comes from cutting the summed wait time across all people, since no-one shows up early if they know it will do them no good. However, it does mean that entirely different people will get the limited good or service that's available. We see from Black Friday footage that this sort of artificial scarcity does not always end well. (Also Apple and Disney want smelly young people queuing for marketing purposes).

But does the come early thing doesn't really apply if people are just rocking up through the day to buy bread from the local bakery. How do incentives apply in the last come first served system in a case like buying bread?

Case 1: Person 1 enters, gets served.
Case 2: Person 1 enters, person 2 comes in behind, person 2 gets served. Person 3 comes in behind, person 3 gets served. Person 1 gets to waste a lot of time, OR do they walk out and come back in as soon as person 3 comes in and demand they are now person 4?

The system also ignores the difficult to measure metric of increased hate for one's fellow citizens.
posted by biffa at 9:21 AM on September 24, 2015 [18 favorites]

When people who arrive last are served first, there is less of a bottleneck and thus less congestion in queues.

Tell this to the four people already camped out in front of the Apple Store on Chicago's Michigan Ave this morning for the iPhone 6s release tomorrow.
posted by dnash at 9:21 AM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

In my upcoming study, this method is a distant second to the queue where I always get served first and then shout "woo-hoo, in your face, suckers!"
posted by zippy at 9:24 AM on September 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'll wait to be the last one to make a comment on this thread
posted by dov3 at 9:25 AM on September 24, 2015 [7 favorites]

No you won't.
posted by Etrigan at 9:25 AM on September 24, 2015 [4 favorites]

Also discussed on More or Less on BBC Radio 4 (or the World Service). It didn't go well with the staff there when offering cake.
posted by Stark at 9:28 AM on September 24, 2015

Slightly relevant, totally brilliant:

"The only time I can remember even coming close to being involved in physical violence in recent years was over some queue jumping…"
posted by oliverburkeman at 9:28 AM on September 24, 2015 [8 favorites]

Great for making kids cry at roller coasters!
posted by Nanukthedog at 9:28 AM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

Tell this to the four people already camped out in front of the Apple Store on Chicago's Michigan Ave this morning for the iPhone 6s release tomorrow.

Well that's the thing, long wait times and this kind of stupid waiting-based race don't help anyone, do they? Those people are wasting a day and it puts pressure on other people to get in line that early too. It's like how Black Friday sales keep moving up and up so now they start Thanksgiving afternoon. It's bad for the customers because they have to wait and waste time OR be late and miss out, it's terrible for the employees because they have to get to work earlier and earlier, and the whole thing just becomes a race to the bottom with everyone's time being wasted standing in a ridiculous line.

I don't know that I'd prefer people who arrived after me being served first because it creates the possibility that I'd never get to the "front" of the line at all, but I think there's merit in addressing how much time we spend waiting for stuff, time that's not spent doing something more productive or enjoyable.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 9:30 AM on September 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

Two-lane traffic queues should filter alternate vehicles at the constriction point otherwise the empty lane is wasted space, extending the length of the queue so that it interferes with other traffic. When this happens, the people who are waiting in line and, more importantly, the people who won't let cars filter from the outside lane at the constriction point (probably because they feel entitled owing to erroneously waiting in line) are the ones who are breaking the system.

Serving from the tail of a queue may be mathematically sound but is sociological nonsense.
posted by merlynkline at 9:31 AM on September 24, 2015 [13 favorites]

you know when teh Disruptorz say that we should view puppies as evil purely from a utilitarian perspective

this is that kind of suggestion
posted by lalochezia at 9:33 AM on September 24, 2015

Dear every store in the world: One big line being served by multiple cashiers. It's so easy. It baffles me that this isn't standard.

Here in the UK, our post offices are, err, out of this world.
posted by ambrosen at 9:33 AM on September 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

Super efficient because people will come in, someone behind them will get served first, and they will say "Fuck all this" and leave.

But if you went back in after you left, wouldn't that make you... next?
posted by chambers at 9:33 AM on September 24, 2015 [16 favorites]

If you are not the only person on line there is a chance that someone will come while you are waiting and get served first, so the only way to get served is if no one else is on line. I don't see how this is efficient except that it basically scares away all customers... I guess I should read the article.
posted by maggiemaggie at 9:35 AM on September 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

Glad to see contemporary researchers catching up to where theology was 2000 years ago. Welcome to the party, latecomers! (You get the next glass of wine. I'll wait.)
posted by Pater Aletheias at 9:38 AM on September 24, 2015 [10 favorites]

Counter-strategy: if I'm not the last one in line, I walk out and then back in. Now I'm the last one in line, so I get served first!
posted by .holmes at 9:38 AM on September 24, 2015 [7 favorites]

But if you went back in after you left, wouldn't that make you... next?
Excellent - that sounds like the right answer! We have a constantly rotating queue and whoever is in the right place when the next person is to be served, gets served. Distribution likely turns out good and everyone gets to step up their fitness a bit.
posted by merlynkline at 9:38 AM on September 24, 2015 [7 favorites]

You might get some of the benefits of this without the potential for violence by making each subsequent access to whatever people are waiting for subject to a random lottery in which your chances are not improved by having waited for a time.
posted by jamjam at 9:38 AM on September 24, 2015 [6 favorites]

How about you make appointments. Get cell numbers. Something simple that still is FIFO but doesn't cause you to actually waste your time?
posted by noinstruments at 9:39 AM on September 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

I've heard similar logic praising drivers who filter traffic by merging at the last possible second for a lane shift.

It's called the zipper merge. The Socialists in the Minnesota DoT would like for you to do it.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 9:40 AM on September 24, 2015 [6 favorites]

The idea that I could breeze into the DMV and cut ahead of the 75-year-old lady using a walker who has been waiting for an hour, in front a large group of my fellow citizens, just because the sign above the counter said "last to arrive is first served" is frankly hilarious. It is literally a comedy sketch.

Hell, I can't even think of a way to describe that without calling it "cutting". I assume optimal queueing theorists already spend a lot of time considering how humans prioritize things like fairness or social status when evaluating how to wait in line, and this study was just focusing on one aspect of a larger problem set.
posted by lefty lucky cat at 9:40 AM on September 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

The other thing that looks like a problem with a LIFO order is that wait times are far less predictable, and have no upper bound: If I go into a store with a regular FIFO queue, I can count the people already waiting, estimate the wait time and decide if I want to wait that long or come back another day. With a LIFO queue, I have to estimate the rate of new people coming in - much harder - and I have no idea what my maximum wait time will be. Plus it invalidates the ticket system used in some places, where you take a number and wait estimate and are free to wander off and do something useful for part of your wait.

I guess the math checks out (it's beyond me by now anyway, plus I don't really have the background), but it looks like this is better suited to a mandatory, specific-time, fixed-number-of people wait like boarding an airplane.
posted by Dr Dracator at 9:41 AM on September 24, 2015 [14 favorites]

How about you make appointments. Get cell numbers. Something simple that still is FIFO but doesn't cause you to actually waste your time?

But how do you decide when to schedule an appointment if two people want the same timeslot? Under this system, you'd have to give it to the last person who asks for it. (And then reschedule the first people to ask for the timeslot to a different slot...)
posted by clawsoon at 9:42 AM on September 24, 2015

This is interesting, but not very useful for real world queuing, though it might have applicability in other areas. In the real world, there are other factors more important than total waiting time. The primary one is predictability. Take the check-in line at the airport, for example. It is more important to me that I can get there early and know that I will make it on my flight than it is to have a shorter waiting time, but the possibility that I miss my flight due to factors beyond my control (others arriving after me).
posted by Nothing at 9:43 AM on September 24, 2015 [6 favorites]

...but it looks like this is better suited to a mandatory, specific-time, fixed-number-of people wait like boarding an airplane.

So everyone has to wait for the last guy to arrive before anyone boards the plane?

This will make all planes late. Every single one.
posted by clawsoon at 9:43 AM on September 24, 2015

...it incentivizes people to arrive early, which researchers say results in people waiting for the longest period of time.

But isn't this fair punishment for people who must always be first?
posted by waving at 9:47 AM on September 24, 2015 [5 favorites]

How do you know when the last person arrives so that you can start?
posted by doctor_negative at 9:47 AM on September 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

Years and years ago, I arrived at a small airport with a guy. He looked at the long check-in queue and said: My policy is to either be the first in line or the last in line and he headed off to the coffee shop.

I mostly fly with an airline that lets me check-in with baggage at least eight hours before a flight. Never a queue.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 9:48 AM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

I guess the math checks out (it's beyond me by now anyway, plus I don't really have the background), but it looks like this is better suited to a mandatory, specific-time, fixed-number-of people wait like boarding an airplane.

Yeah, this is the key -- there has to be an end point and a fixed number of slots ("Sorry, you're too late. The plane's left."), which I think is addressed in the studies.
posted by notyou at 9:48 AM on September 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

People care much less about efficiency than economists believe they do.

/Where's my Nobel Prize?
posted by benito.strauss at 9:50 AM on September 24, 2015 [10 favorites]

It's amazing how visceral the reaction to "last come, first served" is. I feel it too. I don't doubt that these researchers have uncovered a startling truth. But the prospect of having it put into practice in the real world horrifies me. It's as if someone had invented a method of travel that worked like instantaneous teleportation but actually involved the traveler being completely disintegrated on a subatomic level and then recreated an instant later at the destination. Amazing invention -- keep it the hell away from me, I'll stick with the train.
posted by No-sword at 9:52 AM on September 24, 2015 [7 favorites]

Aside from the putative moral dimension concerning the ethical nature of queues, it should be pointed out that the 'last-come-first-serve' method has a very real practical problem: the notion that you'll be able to determine the actual last person to arrive presupposes that we're talking about situations where there is a specific last moment at which people can arrive – whereas these sorts of situations are actually very rare. Someone mentioned the Apple store line for new iPhones – well, under this system, the Apple store would have to open at 10am and close at 11am, and then keep track of the order in which people came in, and then hand out the iPhones, and then open again. Restaurants would have to advertise that "dinner is at 7pm," and then either refuse to serve people who came after 7pm or completely re-form the line for latecomers.

On preview, yeah, it seems like the only case in which this would work would be an airplane boarding line. And frankly there are better ways to do airplane boarding lines anyway – which is to say, people sitting at the back should board first and deplane last, first class should go on last (not first), and under no circumstances whatsoever should people be allowed to board in a queue and then choose their seats, as a certain airline insists on doing. Not that any airline is sane enough to just do it the simple and obvious way.
posted by koeselitz at 9:53 AM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

For a single time-limited event with a pre-sold number of slots like BOARDING AN AIRPLANE I'm totally willing to believe that last-come, first-served is more efficient in reducing total time waited, and everything about air travel is so fucking stupid and miserable that I'm even willing not to shiv the queue-jumpers because, whatever, none of this makes sense.

But like 99% of line-waiting is an ongoing queueing system where people are showing up throughout the day to purchase goods or partake of services, in which case a last-come, first-served queue is some kind of horrible Zeno's paradox of line-waiting and seems unhelpful.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:55 AM on September 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

I've heard similar logic praising drivers who filter traffic by merging at the last possible second for a lane shift.

It's theoretically better, since you're using the available space more efficiently, but of course it only works if everyone manages to merge smoothly so you never get these "oops, not sure what's happening, so better step on the brake" waves propagating down the line. Which I've never seen happen in practice, at least not with human drivers.

(Ants, however...)
posted by effbot at 9:55 AM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

Essentially they're arguing that the most efficient queueing process is not to have a queueing process.

As people mention, if you're the only person waiting to be served and someone else comes in, then it makes the most sense for you to leave, and then come back in. But it makes the most sense for this person now to leave and come back in. And suddenly a third person comes in, and now you're all fighting over the last position... or, maybe you agree to ... queue up to get the "last position." ... maybe you even agree that the first person originally waitin can be the last person...

Alternately, the business/etc most have enough employeess and cashiers/etc such that no line forms. However, while that's best for the customers, it's not the best for the bottom line so this will never happen.

Similarly, if Apple, or black friday, etc were to say "We won't allow a line to form until we open at 7am." - how are they going to enforce that? Let's say they get the police to agree to police their parking lot, not letting anyone in until 7am. Now you've got people waiting just on the edge of wherever is legal waiting to get their spot. And if they show up at 6:50 they won't be able to get as close, so they have to show up sooner ... it's almost as if they're queueing up to queue up. And if you don't have an actual line for the pre-line, then it's going to be people rushing/pushing/struggling. And while the news will get their money shot of someone getting trampled, I think that any situation where you can all but gaurantee a struggle has to have some cost associated with it.

Seriously, this is a combination of a giant Spherical cow and economics assuming rational behavior.

re: traffic: as effbot points out, zipper only works as well as the perfect driver. Drivers are far from perfect, and I'm not letting in that fucker who wait to the last minute to merge. Especially when it's not unforseen construction, but a backed up exit ramp that's been backed up at this time every day for the last 5 years.
posted by nobeagle at 9:57 AM on September 24, 2015 [5 favorites]

Queues are in equilibrium because you resent the people who got there before you for having it easier, and you judge the people who got there after you for their tardiness. If you go to a stack, you create a solid train of judging and resenting directed straight at the last guy to get in line. The equilibrium is disrupted and chaos ensues.
posted by graymouser at 9:58 AM on September 24, 2015 [10 favorites]

Someone has clearly never seen the glory that is a zipper merge. Zipper merging is the opposite of racing up to the end of the closing lane and cutting everyone else off. In a well-executed zipper merge, the cars in the two lanes alternate in a lovely dance. This inspires warm feelings about the brotherhood (...sisterhood...) of mankind (...humankind...), rather than the rage caused by the merge lane cheater.
posted by Octaviuz at 9:58 AM on September 24, 2015 [26 favorites]

OK - that zipper merge. My intuition when the "last possible minute" was mentioned, I assume was "hey - it's best to be a dick and cut in front of everyone" which is different than the controlled merge situation.

Zipper merge definitely seems good, it just requires a good sense of traffic engineering and customs to ensure that people follow it.

But the way things are now, assholes who butt in line to get to the front at the choke point are just that. assholes.

As for this new thing. Yeah, weird. In comp-sci it's called a stack. I can understand the theory behind it, but I think the idea of randomized distribution (no preference for first or last or any order in particular) is probably the best way to go.

The problem, of course, is human psychology. That said, if it's random, in theory it should be ok. Unless you're the first dude, who by pure chance happens to never get called as the people after you keep getting called first. It sure would seem someone is fucking with you.
posted by symbioid at 10:01 AM on September 24, 2015

re: traffic: as effbot points out, zipper only works as well as the perfect driver. Drivers are far from perfect, and I'm not letting in that fucker who wait to the last minute to merge. Especially when it's not unforseen construction, but a backed up exit ramp that's been backed up at this time every day for the last 5 years.

No no no no. There is no logical reason for the closing lane to be any emptier than necessary. You can perform the same merging operation with just as much ease or difficulty at the designated merging point. This is like everybody choosing the longest line at the supermarket out of some sense that it wouldn't be fair to move into the shorter line.

Embrace it—be that fucker.
posted by designbot at 10:02 AM on September 24, 2015 [19 favorites]

For a single time-limited event with a pre-sold number of slots like BOARDING AN AIRPLANE I'm totally willing to believe that last-come, first-served is more efficient in reducing total time waited, and everything about air travel is so fucking stupid and miserable that I'm even willing not to shiv the queue-jumpers because, whatever, none of this makes sense.

Every computer science student in the world gets assigned the "design an algorithm for boarding airliners that is most efficient" question at some point in his/her education, and every single one of us immediately notices that "board from the front-most rows to the back" is the empirically worst solution possible, despite the fact that 90% of commercial airliner use it. It's much, much worse "board from rear-most to front." It's worse than "just let people wander onto the plane in any old order." I'm convinced that it's worse than "throw open the doors and announce that the flight is oversold and the last 20 people in will be bumped to the next flight," though that one would be tough to model.

Moral of the story: even big businesses that ought to know better just do things the same way they've always been done, because Reasons.
posted by Mayor West at 10:04 AM on September 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

Drivers are far from perfect, and I'm not letting in that fucker who wait to the last minute to merge. Especially when it's not unforseen construction, but a backed up exit ramp that's been backed up at this time every day for the last 5 years.

I would draw a bright, sharp line between a two-lanes-merge-into-one situation and a single-lane-exit-ramp situation. In the latter case, zooming up right to the gore and trying to cut in is a total dick move and should be discouraged.
posted by Etrigan at 10:07 AM on September 24, 2015 [8 favorites]

""throw open the doors and announce that the flight is oversold and the last 20 people in will be bumped to the next flight,"

I would love to see this done. Once. At least once.
posted by Annika Cicada at 10:10 AM on September 24, 2015

Guess you've never flown Air Canada.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 10:12 AM on September 24, 2015 [5 favorites]

Late one Sunday night I was driving from Vancouver to Seattle. At some point south of Mt Vernon I encountered a traffic sign: construction 2mi ahead, left lane closed. Drivers began dutifully pulling over into the right-hand lane. I drove free-and-clear in the left lane for two miles, beside completely stopped traffic, and merged successfully at the front of the line. The idea that merging early could be more efficient seems entirely wrong- in that situation nearly everyone would have benefited by merging late.

That experience also disavowed me of any illusion that Americans independent-minded... ;-)
posted by simra at 10:26 AM on September 24, 2015 [4 favorites]

How do you know when the last person arrives so that you can start?

When all the cashiers are lined up in their own queue, and it is one minute to closing time.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 10:30 AM on September 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

I see this kind of thing only being useful in situations where there is no money exchanged. For instance, kids registering for school. If you take away the incentive to get there early and queue up (first choice of teachers for example) and simply say show up and get registered, the efficiency becomes less waiting in line for most.
I don't see this kind of thing ever working at the deli, or at the dmv (and the article admits this).
posted by OHenryPacey at 10:37 AM on September 24, 2015

The idea that merging early could be more efficient seems entirely wrong- in that situation nearly everyone would have benefited by merging late.

If everyone merged late, would you not just wind up with a bottleneck? I mean, that's sort of the whole reason they warn you the lane is closing, to avoid that outcome
posted by Hoopo at 10:38 AM on September 24, 2015

This isn't *quite* the ideal queueing system. To get it just right, you need to serve the last arrivals first, but you also need to put the Benny Hill theme on the PA, so that the constant stream of people waiting in line who repeatedly leave the room and come back in "last" will have proper musical accompaniment.
posted by roystgnr at 10:38 AM on September 24, 2015 [7 favorites]

Octaviuz - the one time I saw a beautiful zipper merge was about 5 days ago. It was a freeway off ramp merging into a normally two lane road, which was blocked by construction to be one lane, and with an accident further up blocking that lane. I.E. normal traffic had to move into the opposite direction's lane (which was blocked off) to get around. So it was two completely separate lanes (where one couldn't skip) merging.

In every situation that I've seen where it's two continguous lanes (I.E. one can merge from one to the other), people have lost their good will watching people jump ship like the opening scene of office space for the previous 500 meters that once it gets to the zipper point that there isn't trust of a left-right-left-right alternation, so there's excessive posturing that leads to odd acceleration and breaking patterns.

And this still doesn't touch the situation of a consistently backed up off-ramp. If the ramp is backed up, there isn't a zippered merge; there's someone stopped at the last moment, and then forcing their way in front of the others, which causes a breaking inch-worm effect in the exiting lane. This also causes traffic to stop in what would otherwise be a continuing traffic lane, for where the breaking inchworm is even more inefficient. Those people need to lose their licence for a few months, along with the people who let them in (IMNSHO).
posted by nobeagle at 10:40 AM on September 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

If everyone merged late, would you not just wind up with a bottleneck? I mean, that's sort of the whole reason they warn you the lane is closing, to avoid that outcome

They warn you the lane is closing so that you don't continue along at max speed, unaware that there is a change about to occur.
Late merging is how it is designed to happen. I have had more than one convo with state patrol over this and the answer is always, "if we wanted you to merge way back there, that's where we would have put the cones".
posted by OHenryPacey at 10:42 AM on September 24, 2015 [10 favorites]

Drivers are far from perfect, and I'm not letting in that fucker who wait to the last minute to merge.

you better believe that when I've waited in line for long-forseen construction (you know, where there have been MERGE LEFT) signs for the past two miles, I'm not letting anybody in.

what's MORE infuriating is a situation I encountered driving north from San Francisco ... I forget the highway I was on, but you hit a toll plaza maybe 30 minutes outside the city? there were LINES formed for the open toll lanes. This was not a zipper merge necessity where there's a claimed efficiency in some people skipping in at the head of the line. yet people were skipping, and folks were letting them in. You better believe that when someone made a move to merge in front of me, I made damn sure the space between me and the car in front of me was tighter than a frog's asshole.
posted by jayder at 10:45 AM on September 24, 2015

Drivers are far from perfect, and I'm not letting in that fucker who wait to the last minute to merge. Especially when it's not unforseen construction, but a backed up exit ramp that's been backed up at this time every day for the last 5 years.

You are the fucker in this case, I'm afraid.
posted by thedaniel at 10:48 AM on September 24, 2015 [8 favorites]

This research is weird, but can we all at least agree to get rid of any multiple processor-multiple queue setup? One queue regardless of the number of processors is maximally efficient. Please stop forming multiple queues you fucks.
posted by GuyZero at 10:53 AM on September 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

if we wanted you to merge way back there, that's where we would have put the cones

Exactly, and this is why state patrol tickets drivers who merge across the gore point.
posted by simra at 10:57 AM on September 24, 2015

It's called the zipper merge. The Socialists in the Minnesota DoT would like for you to do it.

My office: That's where I'm a Socialist!

The zipper merge is more efficient as long as it's done correctly. That's why it's a drum that's being beaten a bit too hard the last few years. I don't think most people will ever adapt to it for the reasons above, but it does make good math sense.
posted by Clinging to the Wreckage at 10:58 AM on September 24, 2015

what's MORE infuriating is a situation I encountered driving north from San Francisco ... I forget the highway I was on, but you hit a toll plaza maybe 30 minutes outside the city? there were LINES formed for the open toll lanes.

My brain is literally melting trying to figure out what this could be referring to.
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:59 AM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

nobeagle: "I'm not letting in that fucker who wait to the last minute to merge."

Then you are part of the problem.

Try this in Germany, and you'll get a ticket. You're just making the queue longer.
posted by brokkr at 11:01 AM on September 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

t should be pointed out that the 'last-come-first-serve' method has a very real practical problem: the notion that you'll be able to determine the actual last person to arrive presupposes that we're talking about situations where there is a specific last moment at which people can arrive – whereas these sorts of situations are actually very rare.

What? No. That's not what they modeled. They modeled a continuous process of service. The whole point is that being the very last person doesn't get you served first. In fact being the very first person gets you served first, because you are both first and last when you arrive.

The point is not to reward lateness, it's to make the question of when to arrive one of strategy based on the behaviour of those around you.

Model this as a game and we'd all be on here bragging about how high our scores are. The rage in this thread is ridiculous. It is genuinely problematic for society that effective solutions to problems are often not fair solutions, with our deep seated hatred of unfairness preventing us from adopting then, even when we know that we deprive ourselves and others by doing so.

It's not smug "disruption" to raise this sort of point, it's an integral part of socioeconomic discourse. We can't just implement the LIFO option, even in situations where it would be optimal, but we can think about it and try to apply some of what it indicates.
posted by howfar at 11:02 AM on September 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

GuyZero: I will heartily endorse the one line multiple processors theory. However, apparently we'll get a lot of people saying that the best approach is to then ignore the single long line, pick a random processor, and setup behind them and feign innocence about seeing the single queue that people have formed. And feign deafness as people say, "Excuse me, but there's already a single line."
posted by nobeagle at 11:03 AM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

Drivers are far from perfect, and I'm not letting in that fucker who wait to the last minute to merge.

Bostonians get around this by driving in the emergency lanes, so you get assholes on both sides of you.
posted by waving at 11:06 AM on September 24, 2015

I don't have time to read this deeply right now (which I suppose means I should shut my lazy gob instead of commenting, but oh well), but I would just like to urge people who dismiss this type of solution out of hand to please at least briefly consider it as a possibility. I'm skeptical of LIFO too — on a gut level, I prefer random/lottery-based allocation systems over either LIFO or FIFO — but any new research on resource allocation is worthwhile. Right now we use two types of allocation system to distribute goods; either the FIFO system, which can result in everyone wasting their time waiting, or market systems, which tends over time to concentrate goods in a very few hands, because under "free" market allocation the chief determinant for whether or not a given person receives goods, even the goods required for continued production, is whether or not that person already has goods. It is important to search for systems that can distribute resources without the unpleasant emergent effects of FIFO queuing and market means.

Basically, whether or not these particular people have cracked the problem of ensuring more equitable distribution of scarce goods, we should not laugh at any reasonable attempt to improve on FIFO queues and markets. in a certain sense, this abstract mathy-seeming problem is one of the most pressing issues of our times.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 11:11 AM on September 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

Let's model this

Scenario 1: Five people arrive to queue up at the same time.
PERSON A: I am the last to arrive.
PERSON B: No, I am.
PERSON C: I was behind all of you the whole time. I am the last.
[Bloodshed ensues]

Scenario 2: Person A arrives, is served. Person B arrives while the clerk is busy, queues. Person C arrives. Person A finishes and leaves. Person C is served. Person D arrives. Person C finishes and leaves. Person D is--
PERSON B: OH MY GOD FUCK EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS
[Bloodshed ensues]
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:11 AM on September 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

Exactly, and this is why state patrol tickets drivers who merge across the gore point.

I'd like to know if the gore point is called that because gore is what happens if you screw up and drive into the barrier or if it's something more prosaic, like, it's called the gore point because the feature looks like a bull's horn when drawn on a traffic engineer's plan.
posted by notyou at 11:15 AM on September 24, 2015

Howfar: as much as I try to think about it, LIFO for queue'ing (not driving) only works in a situation where the queue itself has low reward (I.E. it's not a limited amount of stock, there aren't "better" seats, etc) and even then, position has it's own reward. And again, then the solution is just to have enough processors that there's never a line, or that there's so little of a line that one at most waits a few seconds such that position doesn't have enough weight. Once there's enough weight, then it makes rational economic sense for the first person to reset their position in queue, which leads to jockeying which leads to either strife, or a FIFO queue in front of the LIFO queue. Which could just be solved by removing the artificial LIFO queue as it would just be a buffer of one.

I'm open to hearing of real world situations where this could be useful, economical (in terms of time), and feel fair enough as to be practical.

And yes, I'm willing to concede that zipper merge, if done right, could be practical in the situation where two lanes become one due to one ending.

I still refuse to accept in the situation of last minute merging of a backed up freeway exit lane, as the people who do the last minute thing interfere with the flow in the non-exit lane that they're blocking when they need to stop and wait for someone to get in. Which interfere's in a second lane as people suddnely need to stop/slow and then merge into the unblocked lane, which causes that lane to have people stop/slow as stopped/slowed cars are suddenly pulling in front of them.
posted by nobeagle at 11:16 AM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

So does anyone of a theologically-minded bent care to relate this research to Jesus' Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard? Because (and admittedly this may be because I'm a madman) I suspect that the text may support a reading that indicates that Jesus was to some degree cognisant of the problems with distribution based on time of arrival, and suggested that we should instead make a general practice of not privileging the first and the earliest.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 11:17 AM on September 24, 2015

However, apparently we'll get a lot of people saying that the best approach is to then ignore the single long line, pick a random processor, and setup behind them and feign innocence

Once you have rules, you have a game.

Once you have a game, people play the game.

Once people are playing a game, they want to win.

Once people play to win, they will break rules to win.

This chain of logic explains like 95% of why you want to punch people in life.
posted by GuyZero at 11:19 AM on September 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

In Jesus' example the Processor is infinite, so no queueing required.
posted by notyou at 11:20 AM on September 24, 2015

I'd like to know if the gore point is called that because gore is what happens if you screw up and drive into the barrier or if it's something more prosaic, like, it's called the gore point because the feature looks like a bull's horn when drawn on a traffic engineer's plan.

"triangular piece of ground," Old English gara "corner, point of land, cape, promontory," from Proto-Germanic *gaizon- (cognates: Old Frisian gare "a gore of cloth; a garment," Dutch geer, German gehre "a wedge, a gore"), from PIE *ghaiso- "a stick, spear" (see gar). The connecting sense is "triangularity."

posted by Etrigan at 11:21 AM on September 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

This research is weird, but can we all at least agree to get rid of any multiple processor-multiple queue setup? One queue regardless of the number of processors is maximally efficient. Please stop forming multiple queues you fucks.

I live almost exactly between two Costcos. One of them has a system (that has apparently evolved organically) where people form multiple queues for multiple processors -- I don't mean one line per register, I mean one line for every two or three registers, except that when they get long, they all merge into one, but even after that, the lines tend to overlap and oh my god I can't even describe it let me start over.

So you have a big line that goes down the main aisle of the store. And when you get to the point where you can see the registers, people peel off into one of about four sub-lines, but there's like ten registers, so those sub-lines end up at a couple of registers each, so you have to choose which sub-line to go into and then which register to go to once you get a little closer, and there's always some moron/asshole who jumps onto Register 3 except they were in the line that everyone else knows is for Registers 4 and 5, and the people who are in the Register 1-3 line get all verklempt and no one actually designed or is enforcing this system.

I don't go to that Costco much.
posted by Etrigan at 11:21 AM on September 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

FIRST POST!
posted by ardgedee at 11:23 AM on September 24, 2015 [12 favorites]

the people who do the last minute thing interfere with the flow in the non-exit lane that they're blocking

100% agree. In this case it's incredibly dangerous. That said, I will occasionally do this if the flow of traffic is still good, and there's an opening *and* I'm not at risk of impeding the traffic behind me. If I can't find a safe merge I'll just drive on to the next exit.

you better believe that when I've waited in line for long-forseen construction (you know, where there have been MERGE LEFT) signs for the past two miles, I'm not letting anybody in.

Greg Nog: Will that refusal to let someone in make your life better?

I made a poor life decision and fuck me if I'm going to let anyone else benefit. :P
posted by simra at 11:23 AM on September 24, 2015

How many of you have set 30 day reminders on your calendars so you can get the last post just before before the Archive Moment?
posted by notyou at 11:26 AM on September 24, 2015

I don't go to that Costco much.

People mock the English for queuing but seriously, that's beyond anarchy.
posted by GuyZero at 11:27 AM on September 24, 2015

After reading about it here previously I've started to stay in the merging lane until the end. I totally feel like a jerk for doing it but sometimes being a jerk is the right thing to do.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 11:29 AM on September 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

that's beyond anarchy.

Ha! No, it's not. In many African countries (except for those that have been colonies of the British empire), there is no such thing as a line. It's more like a flock with a central point: the person who is dispersing goods or information, which is where the flock is at its most dense. While you are being served at the post office, people will reach around you to hand money over in exchange for stamps. Now THAT is beyond anarchy.

On the other hand, while all that flocking and reaching is going on, most people are still being friendly and good natured. This is what makes it bearable.
posted by Too-Ticky at 11:32 AM on September 24, 2015

The zipper merge is so goddamn infuriating.

There is a peer pressure to merge when the guy in front of you merges, and almost everyone merges early. One of the main roads I use is under long-term construction so I've gotten used to actually merging when I am supposed to merge, but it still kind of makes me feel like an asshole.
posted by graventy at 11:33 AM on September 24, 2015

Once you have rules, you have a game.

Once you have a game, people play the game.

Once people are playing a game, they want to win.

Once people play to win, they will break rules to win.

This chain of logic explains like 95% of why you want to punch people in life.

so here's the deal: there's two potential ways to react to someone using tactics that pervert the intended purpose of a system through revealing the suggestions the system actually makes about how to behave. one is to silently and fruitlessly hate on the people who deploy those tactics. The other is to change the game. one way to change the game might be to introduce and enforce another rule. "oh, and by the way, nothing personal, but if you pull THIS shit you're gonna get punched in the fucking face, and we don't care how much it'd benefit you if you could get away with it" is one example of the type of rule you could introduce, and sometimes this strategy is the best we can do. Another way is to (as we've been doing in this thread) consciously consider when constructing systems not just how we would prefer people to act, but how they actually act in practice, and to devise a system that works satisfactorily even (or especially) when everyone tries to break it.

People who get hung up on the apparent immorality of putting the first last and the last first are overlooking how putting the first first and the last last can have vicious unintended effects. it is less immoral, possibly, to give benefits to latecomers instead of early birds than it is to set up systems that encourage people to waste their time in line.

(and yes, by using that "put the last first and the first last" wording I do in fact intend to suggest that LIFO is more in keeping with Christian ethics than FIFO).
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 11:36 AM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

Has anyone remarked ( i don't think that the article did) that elevators work under the last in/first out principle. I have been to several places, including a screening of the Letterman show waaaaay back when he was at NBC and after waiting all day in the queue, we were brought into 30 rock and led to an elevator whereupon the order of the queue was reversed when we arrived at studio 6A, and the last folks on the elevator got the better seats.
posted by OHenryPacey at 11:37 AM on September 24, 2015

Wouldn't that depend on whether the elevator has one or two doors, and if there are two, which door opens? Some of them are FIFO, some are not.

And zipper merging is only infuriating if people suck at it.
posted by Too-Ticky at 11:40 AM on September 24, 2015

And zipper merging is only infuriating if people suck at it.

So, always.
posted by Etrigan at 11:41 AM on September 24, 2015 [6 favorites]

That depends on where you are. It works in some places, or so I've heard.
posted by Too-Ticky at 11:44 AM on September 24, 2015

Zipper merging doesn't seem to work for backed up exit lanes. It just causes traffic in all the other non-exit lanes. Also, there's no real way to win when you're trying to merge out of an exit lane that isn't backed up, into a normal flow of traffic lane that is backed up. Merging early causes more back up in the normal flow of traffic, merging late causes back up in the exit lane that's moving freely. It seems like a lot of LA freeways have this unfortunate configuration where after getting on the freeway you're immediately in an exit lane and have to merge out of it, and I don't enjoy it.

I for one get unreasonably infuriated when people fail to zipper merge in non-construction two-lanes-becoming-one situations. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt in construction situations, especially at night, but holy shit people, do your duty and let one car in front of you when the lanes are merging. And for the mergers, don't try to nose in behind the car I'm letting in! THAT'S NOT HOW ZIPPERS WORK. One car at a time, for a harmonious zipper merge that benefits us all.
posted by yasaman at 11:49 AM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

What happens if you put all the people in a queue on a treadmill? Do they take off any earlier?
posted by a lungful of dragon at 11:55 AM on September 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

And frankly there are better ways to do airplane boarding lines anyway – which is to say, people sitting at the back should board first and deplane last, first class should go on last (not first), and under no circumstances whatsoever should people be allowed to board in a queue and then choose their seats, as a certain airline insists on doing. Not that any airline is sane enough to just do it the simple and obvious way.

Previously. Actually, unassigned is second best. The most efficient way is the Steffen Method:

"Basically, window seat passengers from one whole side of the plane are sent in, followed by the window seat passengers from the other side. But the rows of passengers allowed in are staggered, so you never have multiple passengers using the same aisle space to sit down or put their bags into the overhead bins."

And here's a video covering all the methods. Slowest is simply back to front, without consideration of window to aisle seats.
posted by FJT at 12:15 PM on September 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

It's not the breaking of rules to attempt to win that's as frustrating, so much as they getting away with it. Seriously, if the processor/cashier refused to help the person who skipped the line, feigning innocence, there'd be a moral boost to everyone in the line, and they'd be a bit happier for the cheater's attempt. But when the cashier just looks sheepish, and helps the person anyway, there's the instinct that yes, you also should play be "might makes right" and skip the (wake up!) sheeple in line and take your (rightful) spot. But you don't want to be an asshole (because if everyone acted this way, it literally would come down to might makes right). But you don't want to wait, and the asshole made you wait more. But you don't want to be an asshole. ...

At anyrate, the LIFO queue isn't argued to be sensible for a grocery style queue (I.E. no one is getting into line "early."), but instead is only considered to be sensible for an iphone/black friday sort of thing where people are queue'ing up before they can be served. And to argue that LIFO makes sense is to argue that the event is low-enough value that there won't be social discord upon the official start of lining up.

So yes, there's people queue'ing for 24 hours for an iphone - these people value it a lot. If the people value it a lot/there's limimted stock/etc there's more weight/cost and as such there's an increased likely hood of strife and irrationality. If you don't let them queue in front of the store, they'll queue at the parking lot getting ready to shove and run when the line "officially" begins. Sure, they might be "wasting" their time, but they've made their internal economic decision to do that. Attempting to add penalties to make people not want to choose to wait seems irrational. If people want to wait, and there isn't sufficient stock/processing, that seems reasonable; let people sacrifice to show how much their "want" is instead of doing a lottery were someone gets something ahead of others that they don't particularly care for (I.E. the situation is not maximal utility).

Heck, maybe make the "cost" of queue'ing explicit. On launch day the price of the new iphone will be $1000. On the next day it will be $950. From there on, the price will be $900. That would self limit the number of people in line on day 1 such that there would be less emotional/practical need to queue early. And yes, perhaps you could even have different prices on the first day, maybe dependent upon whether or not there's an (apparent) line. The main point is there would be pre-announced an extra cost for the very first, along with the explicitly announced lesser cost later.

In situations where their isn't a strong incentive to queue early (I.E. no "better" seats, or inventory issues) I'd argue that it's not worth considering as the queue's are self-limiting. Yes, people might queue at the door of the gym at 5am before it opens, but it's just 3-5 people, and they're all polite and hanging out and let the seniors in ahead of them anyways. People might show up 5-10 minutes ahead of time, but they're certainly not lining up for the 5am gym opening time at 10pm the previous night. Even if they *really* want their particular swim lane.
posted by nobeagle at 12:19 PM on September 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

When I've seen zipper merge really well, there were signs everywhere informing drivers that they should zipper merge. So instead of something like "Lane Closed Ahead Merge Left" there was something like "Stay In Lane Do Not Merge Until End" and then "Merge Here Take Your Turn".
posted by grouse at 12:38 PM on September 24, 2015 [13 favorites]

I've read the article, and I still can't wrap my head around it. I wish they had provided concrete examples.

I'm intrigued, but if someone wants to defend this thesis I wish they would provide a scenario where it worked.
posted by maggiemaggie at 12:44 PM on September 24, 2015

I've solved the queue problem! I buy everything on-line and I never go anywhere, except when I do, I fly Southwest where you board in numerical order so you don't even have to stand in line.

The most efficient queue is no queue at all.
posted by Squeak Attack at 12:59 PM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

what's MORE infuriating is a situation I encountered driving north from San Francisco ... I forget the highway I was on, but you hit a toll plaza maybe 30 minutes outside the city? there were LINES formed for the open toll lanes.

My brain is literally melting trying to figure out what this could be referring to.
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:59 AM on September 24

I'm not able to look at a map on my slow-as-molasses bargain smartphone plan, but googling suggests it might have been Carquinez Bridge?
posted by jayder at 1:03 PM on September 24, 2015

Actually nobeagle, your examples were very helpful.
posted by maggiemaggie at 1:05 PM on September 24, 2015

Squeak Attack: “... I fly Southwest where you board in numerical order so you don't even have to stand in line.”

Agh! This is a terrible thing that Southwest does! Why does anyone think it is good? The only thing worse than this method of boarding people on a plane is to board it front-to-back. Letting people choose their own seats is obnoxious, annoying, tedious, and leads to all kinds of logjams and backups. People hem and haw and take time deciding; sometimes they pick the back, sometimes they pick the front, so there's no way for it to really rise above a really dismal level of efficiency. Every time I fly Southwest, it's just a horrendous mess, and there are always ten minutes of people wanting to switch seats with this person and changing their mind about that seat and on and on.

Airplane seats should be assigned, and people should have to board back-to-front. It's the only way that actually works.
posted by koeselitz at 1:05 PM on September 24, 2015

(Also, saying "you don't even have to stand in line" when you fly Southwest is basically redefining the meaning of "line." Yes, you stand on numbers, or in stalls, or whatever. You're still waiting behind people to get on a plane.)
posted by koeselitz at 1:06 PM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

I like the SW boarding. I get on early, march to the back, get an empty overhead for my bag, get my aisle seat, and ignore everyone fucking around, who let's face it, will fuck around no matter what boarding system an airline uses.

Well, yeah, duh, at some point you will stand behind someone else in boarding SW, but you don't *have* to stand in the stall at all! Just look to see who is standing in your numerical area, and get up and get on when they do. Standing in the stalls for a super-long time is for suckers.
posted by Squeak Attack at 1:16 PM on September 24, 2015

I'm not able to look at a map on my slow-as-molasses bargain smartphone plan, but googling suggests it might have been Carquinez Bridge?

I was thinking either that or the Benicia Bridge but the queue-jumping toll situation you were describing was throwing me off. But my brain is solid again, thanks
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:19 PM on September 24, 2015

When two lanes are merging and I see somebody trying to merge in front of me way, way before the merge point, I become irrationally angry at them. By doing that, they're creating an opportunity for four or five assholes to zoom by them and also merge in front of me. In essence, merging early is enabling the assholes. You can do more to screw up the douche drivers by waiting for the merge point and then alternating merging at that time then you can by merging early.

In other words, if you take follow the tenets of the zipper merge, you are fucking up the douche drivers. Take satisfaction in that and wait until the merge point to merge.
posted by Joey Michaels at 1:23 PM on September 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

Not waiting for the merge point is literally wasting available road resources. There is a finite number of lane-feet between you and your destination, and insisting that a mile or so of it be taken out of circulation - by merging early, and looking down upon those who drive to the end of it - is nonsensical.
posted by jetsetsc at 1:42 PM on September 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

Agh! This is a terrible thing that Southwest does! Why does anyone think it is good?

Well, if you fly a decent amount you'll have A-List status, and then you're like the 30th person, max, to get on the plane even if you booked your flight 30 minutes ago. So, you'll be in your seat in the exit row falling asleep while all the tourists try to fit their steamer trunks (which is so stupid as Southwest allows two free checked bags) in the overhead compartments.

With a regular airline, I'd have to book my flight way in advanced to make sure I had a decent seat.
posted by sideshow at 1:46 PM on September 24, 2015

Heck, maybe make the "cost" of queue'ing explicit. On launch day the price of the new iphone will be $1000. On the next day it will be $950. From there on, the price will be $900. That would self limit the number of people in line on day 1 such that there would be less emotional/practical need to queue early. And yes, perhaps you could even have different prices on the first day, maybe dependent upon whether or not there's an (apparent) line. The main point is there would be pre-announced an extra cost for the very first, along with the explicitly announced lesser cost later.

Unless I'm misreading you, all this does is switch from a queue-based system to a hybrid market-queue system, sort of like those deals some amusement parks have where rich people can cut in line by paying more. these systems are morally reprehensible; they give the most fun to the people who already have the most stuff, and lengthen the amount of time that ordinary people have to spend waiting. I would say that hybrid market/queue systems fail on a moral level because of how they ultimately comfort the relatively comfortable and afflict the relatively afflicted.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 1:49 PM on September 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

On launch day the price of the new iphone will be $1000. On the next day it will be $950.

This is a Dutch Auction and now you've moved from queuing theory to auction theory.
posted by GuyZero at 2:05 PM on September 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

I wish people _would_ use lines for airplane boarding. Even for the frequent flyer group (which is basically first after "people needing assistance") there is usually just a sort of amoeba of people bunched in front of the gate who all push forward at once. At least in the US.

In Japanese airports, they have people holding signs (Group 1, Group 2, etc) and people line up behind them and take their turn. First time I saw that I was both impressed and sad that its so messy here.

With a regular airline, I'd have to book my flight way in advanced to make sure I had a decent seat.
Nah, if the same scenario applies (you fly a lot) you'll just book one of the seats that non-frequent-flyers can't book, which are pretty good.
posted by thefoxgod at 2:20 PM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

No, you can't board the airplane back to front, because by the time the people near the front get in, there's no overhead space. Everyone has stashed their shit in there on the way by as the bin fills forward faster than the seats (because of people's fucking steamer trunks, plus the reluctance to put their stuff by someone else's until they have no choice.) The only way to do it is to load front-to-back and have a flight attendant block the aisle just past the next person's seat location.

The zipper merge works great, but the hard feelings all come from the people without the guts to do it. Don't get mad, join us. If we could fill up both lanes, it would be "fair" because neither would be an advantage. (What annoys me most is the cowards who will zip past the first half-mile of queue, then get cold feet and try to merge still a half-mile before the merge point. Now I know you aren't a zipper-merge believer, you were just being a dick for the first half.)
posted by ctmf at 2:29 PM on September 24, 2015

I haven't flown without assigned seating, but when I have a confirmed seat, my strategy is to check everything but the laptop bag, get a seat far from, but within sight of the gate, and wait. At last call, when the crowd dies down, waltz on the plane, laptop under the seat, door closes, zoom away. No standing in the aisle waiting for everyone else to fuck around.

Doesn't work if you need overhead space.

I think the stack system could work for something continuous like an Apple store if you segmented the entry times say, hourly. Everyone who shows up for the 0900 opening is pushed on the stack. At 0900, start a new stack for 1000, and start popping people off of the 0900 stack. I don't know what I'd do if the 0900 stack wasn't empty yet at 1000 though.
posted by ctmf at 2:52 PM on September 24, 2015

The problem with the toll booths at Bay Area bridges is that most of the booths have been converted over to Fastrak or Fastpass transponders. It's great if you have one of those -- you just blast through the booth without stopping and get a little chirp from your transponder confirming that you've paid five bucks to cross.

It's not so great if you don't have a transponder, because then you have to line up for one of the relatively few cash booths. So you get that back up which leads to the late mergers. However! Since the cash booths are likely to be used by out-of-towners or those who don't cross bridges frequently and other types without the transponder, they may not be aware of the nuances of the toll plaza, only discovering too late that they've missed the chance to get into one of the cash booth lines.
posted by notyou at 3:01 PM on September 24, 2015

What are we even lining up for? Bread? Dildos? The new iPhone? I've lined up for stuff before and it's never been worth it. There's not a line I can remember from my lifetime where I got to the end of it and thought "man, it was totally worth being in that line for this."
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:06 PM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

As a non-morning person I'm just going to cackle maniacally at this idea.
posted by BrotherCaine at 3:20 PM on September 24, 2015

Half of you will be happy to know that someone lane-blocked me ahead of a zipper merge on my commute today.
posted by Etrigan at 3:26 PM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

Half of you will be happy to know that someone lane-blocked me ahead of a zipper merge on my commute today.

I hope everyone can agree that the people who drive in two lanes to prevent anyone from passing them are the worst people.
posted by grouse at 3:39 PM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

clearly, this act of lane-blocking is a sign that we need to smash the "democratic" bourgeois governments that control our roads and replace them with worker's soviets consisting of the elected representatives of transit riders.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 3:40 PM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

The grease of a functioning society is basic fairness. If anyone can take advantage, then there is less incentive to play by the rules of social norms, whatever they happen to be.

A zipper-merge is only fair in all drivers' minds if anyone in traffic can get into the fast lane to merge at the front.

In most situations, a zipper-merge benefits only those already in the fast lane, excluding anyone waiting in traffic, because anyone in the fast lane is going to be traveling too fast for anyone stuck in the existing traffic queue to join that fast lane.

A zipper-merge may be efficient in a narrow, abstracted traffic engineering simulation model running on a computer cluster, but in reality, a distant merge is often and not unexpectedly perceived to be unfair to drivers who are stuck in traffic, well behind the point where the "unzipped" fast lane merges into traffic.

So you might get some people blocking that fast lane out of a desire to enforce community norms of fairness and equality, whether or not that perception is false.

However passive-agressive or wrong that gesture may seem to you from a removed perspective, humanity as a whole will constrain how others behave when it is perceived that a few others are taking advantage of a perceived unfair situation.

Fairness and ethics are popular topics in behavioral science. But fairness and ethics are also things we negotiate as a regular society on a daily basis, such as when we have discussions about how certain people take advantage of others for their own gain.

We just had a post not a few days ago on this site about a hedge fund manager who is a subject of serious derision for exploiting sick people for financial benefit, for instance. Anyone selling a drug at a profit is pretty much exploiting someone who is sick, but where do we draw the line at what is an acceptable profit? What the hedge fund manager did was wrong to many, but we still seem generally okay with buying medicines from established drug companies. So fairness is more of a gradient than a black and white issue.

Tl;dr. Basically, the only way that we negotiate the social grey areas of scenarios like automobile traffic is by positioning our vehicles to allow some through and to block others, as we get to our destination. For instance, we assign some drivers with higher priorities: emergency vehicles get special privileges to get through jams, while strangers in non-emergency vehicles do not.

So if the zipper-merge fast lane gets blocked, then it might be useful to understand why it gets blocked, specifically by understanding why people perceive the fast lane gives other drivers an advantage they do not deserve, and figuring out better ways (other than hyperbole) to figure out a solution that addresses that perception.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 4:16 PM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

But there is an easy way to get rid of this feeling of unfairness which is what grouse described: to put signs up telling people to stay in the lane and merge at the merge point. If you had the signs telling you to do it then more people would do it and you wouldn't have the situation with one lane empty because everyone has already merged so that jerks can cut to the front, you have a situation where both lanes are equally backed up so the jerks are just part of traffic like everyone else.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 6:12 PM on September 24, 2015 [4 favorites]

I just picture all the brawls that will break out from the shit.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:22 PM on September 24, 2015

If everyone merged late, would you not just wind up with a bottleneck?

You are right. Merging at the last possible moment only works if there is spacing between cars allowing for a merge. If one lane is nearly stopped and some jerk roars up to the front, he makes things worse by forcing the moving lane to stop in order to let him in, which slows the entire flow.

You can see the difference in the simulation here.

So in the case in which traffic is already stopped, merging late makes things worse because cars at the merge point must stop and start alternately. In that case, forcing people to merge earlier would be better. To make a zipper work, everyone needs to maintain at least two car lengths of space in front of them as they approach the merge. If that isn't the case, then late merging is worse.
posted by JackFlash at 7:57 PM on September 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

You know what would make zipper merging work? If you didn't know which lane was the merger and which the mergee. If the sign said "One of these lanes is going to disappear in two miles, stay tuned to find out which."

I think the psychology now is that if you are in the correct, non-closing lane, you have made a good choice! But if you are in the soon-to-be-closing lane, too bad, so sad, you have picked the wrong lane and must throw yourself on the mercy of the drivers in the good lane. So all the people coming into the non-closing lane are interlopers. Maybe they are the good, polite kind who merge early or maybe they are the asshole kind who merge at the last minute, but either way they are the unlucky beggars who have lost their lane and now are trying to take some of mine. Not knowing which lane is going to close is like the random service model--there is no incentive to merge early because you don't know which is the right lane to be in anyway, and no one has sat smugly for two miles with a sense of entitlement to the lane.

Or maybe the best way to say it is "In two miles, both these lanes are going to disappear and be replaced by a new, third lane that you must share. Play nice."
posted by looli at 7:57 PM on September 24, 2015 [12 favorites]

re zipper merges:
You can get much of the benefit by yourself by keeping a *big* distance between you and the car in front of you when approaching the merge. The idea is to make it very tempting for lots of people (let dozens in) to merge early, in front of you, rather than waiting to merge later, when it creates more congestion. If you do this *you* will get there sooner, despite the paradox that you're letting people in.

(Can someone pull up the link to the video demonstration, experiment and paper I'm thinking of here?)
posted by spbmp at 8:32 PM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

The maths is beyond me, but it sort of sounds like anarchic appointments. If you just assigned everyone a time, and everyone turned up perfectly on time, your queue would be maximally efficient. You can't rely on that though, so you just take people as they show up and let the crowd eat the cost of trying multiple times, which averages out to be more efficient at the cost of screwing some people?
posted by lucidium at 8:46 PM on September 24, 2015

Queue the outrage
posted by anothermug at 9:10 PM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

When this incentive is removed—under a "last come, first served" system—the queues are more efficient.

The problem with a statement like this in the article is that there's no single definition for the "efficiency" of a queue. The behavior of a queuing system has various observable parameters, such as maximum queue length, or service throughput, etc. But "efficiency" has to be conceptualized relative to the system being analyzed. And when this involves actual people you end up having to think about the social relations and social contexts to which these algorithms are being applied. Something as simple and obvious as a queue structures political choices and thus how research like this is conducted.
posted by polymodus at 9:13 PM on September 24, 2015

> Can someone pull up the link to the video demonstration, experiment and paper I'm thinking of here?

That would be the second page, http://trafficwaves.org/trafexp.html My stretch of I-5 in the video now has "traffic harmonization" electronic signs on overhead gantries, the first one in the USA. I should shoot a new vid, I guess.

The real, recognized, official problem with merging/zippers is that the "early merge" often causes a jam which grows backwards past the merge-warning signs. All the daily drivers know to get over in time, and then to form a tailgating blockade.

So, the "cheating interlopers" are really just non-communters; totally innocent drivers who never saw a "lane ending" sign, and now have wandered into a trap set by ...THE EVIL GREEDY "EARLY MERGERS" all just itching to feel superior by "Othering" innocent drivers and then doling out punishment. As with intolerance and prejudice against "labeled outsiders," the cheaters don't really exist. They were created by the early-mergers, just as all bullies "create victims."

As daily-commuting Sneeches, does *your* belly have a star, or not?
posted by billb at 11:00 PM on September 24, 2015 [5 favorites]

Speaking of simulators, I made one for a lifo queue. I don't know if you can draw any real conclusions from it, but if you want to see a bunch of cheaters endlessly milling around in a circle as they all try to be last you can do that. The code is on github.
posted by Pyry at 11:08 PM on September 24, 2015 [7 favorites]

With the problem of early mergers causing the point where the cars merge to drift down the road from the bottleneck that causes the merge, I have a strategy which I've never quite had the guts to put into full action, but feels like it should work.

It's only really suitable where all the traffic on the road is merging. Instead of merging at the point where the other cars merge, roughly match speed with the traffic in the merged lane, but stay in the lane that is merging into the other. And follow along in that lane all the way to the bottleneck. Now the traffic coming along behind you sees that they're not going to be the last to merge, and they also come closer to the bottleneck, so that by the time you reach the bottleneck, vehicles will be zippering in all the way from the original merge point (because there will still be the tradition of merging there) up until the actual bottleneck.
posted by ambrosen at 6:42 PM on September 25, 2015