Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything - Waiting In Line

Episode Date: October 23, 2013

About a year ago I travelled across America for the BBC. I visited Airports, Amusement parks, Highways and Community Colleges in order to understand how the priority queue is changing the American experience of waiting in line. A version of this piece aired on the BBC World Service, part of their “Real America” series produced in conjunction with PRX. *********Click on the image for the whole story about this week’s installment**********  

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Episodes every other week at neverpo.st and wherever you find pods. You are listening to Benjamin Walker's Theory of Everything. This installment is called Waiting in Line. Even though waiting in line is an essential part of the human experience, there's no such thing as a universal cue. You never can tell where you're going to get one of these clashes of cues. Dick Larson is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His favorite story about the clash of cues takes place at a Hong Kong university in the ladies' room.

They were lined up in front of the sinks. As the door opens, the one waiting longest would go in. And then a woman comes in that no one had recognized before and goes right to stall number three and parks herself there and stands there. As if she owns that door. When that door opens, she's going to go in. Well, a near riot broke out. It turns out that the woman who came in, the stranger, was from mainland China. In mainland China, the tradition in the women's room is you have separate lines in front of each of the stall doors. And in Hong Kong, with first come, first serve from British tradition,

you line up as a single queue in front of the sinks. Dick Larson is internationally recognized as an expert in the field of operations research, or queuing theory. My nickname is Dr. Q. I went to see Dr. Q because I wanted to find out how the American queue works. Most members of society agree the person who's been waiting longest should be served next. Thank you for calling. The American line is rooted in the classic British first-come,

first-served queue. Please remain on the line and your call will be answered in the order received. And many U.S. businesses, Dr. Q told me, used to pride themselves on implementing these serpentine lines. There used to be a bank in New York called Chemical Bank, and they used to claim that they were the first ones to have that in their bank lobbies. Wendy's is very proud that they're the first ones in fast food that had the single serpentineies. Wendy's is very proud that they're the first ones in fast food that have the single serpentine line. American Airlines is very proud that they claim that they're the first ones to have single serpentine line in airports. But today, Americans are waiting in a new kind of queue,

a priority queue. Priority queues means that certain customers get higher priority than others. Most of the priority queues Americans wait in are invisible. We don't ever see the people who wait behind us or get ahead of us because of technology. In the U.S., when we call a brokerage firm or a travel agency or a bank, these are usually priority queues. And based on the answers to a few questions that they give you initially, they'll put you to a server who is qualified and best suited to handle your call. And I don't think people perceive this as unfair.

Perhaps you have other businesses you'd like to chat about? Using the Blue Perfume Office lane, we invite our Dividend Miles chairmen, Platinum, Gold, our Silver Perfured members, and Starline's Gold members to board. I first realized that the priority queue is changing the American experience of waiting in line at the airport. In American airports, priority queues are visible everywhere. At the check-in counter, security, the boarding gates. Many airlines now board their passengers according to the amount of money that they've paid for their ticket. And we'd like to continue boarding using the red general boarding lane.

We invite zone number one to board. Americans have a deep-rooted belief in the market. And since priority queues can generate revenue, it's no surprise that they're turning up in the public sector as well. But are traditional American values like fairness and equal opportunity really compatible with letting someone buy their way to the front of the line? And what happens when people who pay more want more? America's already suffering from extreme polarization.

Is it really a good idea to mess around with systems that further divide citizens into haves and have-nots? Anyone else boarding zones 1, 2, and 3? Let's go find out. Since this is a full flight, unfortunately, I am going to start checking bags. There is no exception. Sorry. I flew to Atlanta, Georgia, to visit Six Flags Whitewater, an amusement park with giant water slides like the Tornado and the Bermuda Triangle,

and lots of people waiting for their turn to run. But thanks to my nifty bright yellow flash pass, I didn't have to stand around. We would like to take a moment of your time to explain how the system works. The whole purpose of our product is to not have people standing in line. So the guests still wait in line, they product is to not have people standing in line. So the guests still wait in line. They just don't physically have to stand in line. Tara Morandi is with LoQ, the company that designed the RFID-powered green and yellow flash pass wristbands.

Both allow guests to virtually queue. In other words, I can doggy paddle in the wave pool until it's my turn to ride. Scan your band again on the sticker. All right, you're good to go. And I got the yellow wristband, which gave me priority. Not only did I get to virtually queue, but my wait time was half that of all the wristbandless guys standing in line baking in the hot sun. And I'll confess, I was scared to ride the tornado, but I was more scared that one of those angry-looking guys might think that I was cutting the line.

It's not a coincidence that Six Flags picked really bright yellow and really bright green as the wristband colors. Low-Q installed the flash pass at Six Flags Whitewater in the summer of 2011. It was a pilot project. Six Flags was concerned that their guests might reject the idea of yet another fee. Amusement parks are expensive. Parking, lockers, food, admission, it all adds up. But the flash pass was a huge hit.

Guests lined up to pay twice as much to avoid the queues. Six Flags is now installing the flash pass system in all of its American water parks. You know, you can have an experience where you spend most of your time waiting in line for the park. You still get to ride five rides. But are you eating and enjoying a meal with your family? Are you relaxing in the sun? And I think that's where it comes down to. People are paying for their time. And that's why we're successful in the park. Six Flags Whitewater is on the outskirts of Atlanta. If you're driving, you might take Interstate 85 part of the way.

In October of 2011, the Georgia Department of Transportation created a flash pass for I-85. Drivers with a peach pass can now, for a fee of course, get out of traffic and ride in a special lane all of their own. Go, go, go, go, go, go. Come on, Metro Atlanta, keep moving. Get your Peach Pass today. So here's the start of the lane that we cannot be in right now because I don't have a Peach Pass and I won't get a Peach Pass. If Chris Haley had a Peach Pass, then he'd be able to drive in the hot lane. Cameras would electronically track his car and his bank account would be charged accordingly.

But even though he can afford it, Chris Haley chooses not to. And on his blog, Stop PeachPass, he actively lobbies against the hot lanes. That's just not where I want to spend my money. But for many people, that's just simply not an option to spend $120 a month to commute. You know, that's the difference between them being able to make their electric payment or rent, you know, so they're certainly not going to choose that option. Now, in order to make room for the hot lanes, the Georgia DOT took out the carpool lanes on I-85. So overnight, all the cars with two people in them were pushed into the general traffic.

This made traffic worse for drivers who chose not to pay. My typical daily routine was that I would drop my daughters off at the bus stop that's just a couple houses down, hop in the car, and start my commute. And usually arrive to work 35 minutes, 40 minutes later. But the very first day that this was implemented, my commute was an hour and a half. Then it was like that the next day and the next day and the next day. And it went on for weeks. Like other people, I ended up slowly adjusting my schedule. And for me, that meant I had to give up leaving my daughters at the bus stop.

The Hot Lanes officials claim rush hour commute times will eventually return to normal. But Chris Haley says they're not taking drivers like him, drivers who commute earlier and later, into account in their studies. You can't improve the level of service in one particular lane on a fixed corridor like this without degrading the service in the remaining lanes. So by offering the choice to a few who want to spend money to have increased service, you've decreased the service that the rest of the population is going to have. Yeah, but look at this.

We're coming to a standstill, and we're watching these cars fly by in the hot lane. It does seem like I'm making the choice to be a loser by sitting here. I think it's really a false choice to say that this hot lane or priority service gives you a choice because I essentially live close to an entrance point to the highway and I work right off the highway. There's only one effective way for me to get to work. There is no choice. Chris Haley's not the only driver who thinks Georgia made a bad choice with the hot lanes. I would say that the popular reaction has been overwhelmingly revulsion.

Critics often use the phrase Lexus lanes to describe the hot lanes. Ariel Hart is the transportation reporter at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and she told me there's truth in the name calling. I am much more likely to find a hot lane driver who is driving a Lexus or, you know, the very first one I ever found was driving an Audi. Describe what we're about to do. So about to get in the hot lane. So exciting. Here we go. So luxurious. Graphic designer Clint Keener totally rejects the idea that the hot lanes only benefit the rich.

And as we roared down I-85 in his Ford Focus, he pointed out all the fancy cars stuck in the congested general traffic. Oh, look. Oh, there's a BMW. Oh, there's a new 5 Series BMW. Oh, my God, they're so poor. Let's see. What other? Oh, there's a Mercedes. There's an Acura. These poor people and their Mercedes can't compete with my focus. Clint Keener believes that the real solution to Atlanta's traffic problems would be an investment in rail. But he refuses to suffer in traffic just because the state can't get its act together.

For him, it's a matter of choice, a hellish commute or the hot lanes. I really don't think they'll ever, ever make trains ever. I think that's just, they would never do it because they're too hard-headed and don't see what we really need. But so be it. I want everybody to boycott it so there's nobody in my lane. I like choice. I like being able tocott it so there's nobody in my lane. I like choice. I like being able to go around all these crazy people in traffic and get to work on time, fresh,

not stressed out. To me, my time is worth money. My time is worth a dollar. An hour out of my day is worth a dollar. It's basically as simple as that. According to Georgia State Senator Kurt Thompson, though, a typical Atlanta commuter would have to pay a lot more than a dollar a day in order to use the hot lanes. Because it can be especially expensive during rush hour, it can cost you about $7 to go from one end of my district to the other end of my district on this road in a hot lane. At the end of the day, you've got to have the money.

As we toured his district in his antique BMW, Kurt Thompson made the case that the state should cancel the Peach Pass. The hot lanes, he told me, are un-American. This is not about improving traffic times. It's not about improving the non-attainment issue about our carbon dioxide emissions from our cars. It's just about giving options to people who can afford it. So what it does is it creates this, what I call the politics of envy, because it further separates us between the haves and the have-nots. And it's not that there haven't been, you know, rich people, poor people, but we've always prided ourselves on not being so stratified. And we never had, our founding fathers never had this idea of

i got mine now you go get yours that's not anywhere in the constitution the bill of rights the declaration of independence nothing that you that could even be loosely read in a poetic sense as i got mine you go get yours and if you can get yours you can have the stuff I got too, is not anywhere in our founding documents. But that's what this creates. Well, here we are. We're almost at a complete standstill. I mean, you know, you've got, you know, you could afford maybe to get in there. Are you really telling me that you're going to spend the rest of your life

sitting here, stalled in traffic, you're never going to wake up one day and say, that's it? No, I'm not. You know, we have a saying, if you feed a stray cat, you have a cat. I went back to the water park for another visit. This time, I didn't get a flash pass. And you know what? It wasn't as much fun. It's not like I had a bad time. I rode some rides.

I did some more doggy paddling. But waiting in line stinks. I knew everyone with a flash pass was definitely having a better time than I was. And while Six Flags has done an amazing job installing LocQ's virtual queuing system, it is not invisible. When this group of five teenage girls walked past me, flaunting their yellow wristbands, knowing that my wait time was twice theirs, I couldn't help myself, and I muttered at them under my breath. And that's when it hit me. It is impossible to implement a priority queue without destroying what is probably the only real benefit

of waiting in a good old-fashioned line. That sense that we are all in this together. Offering people the choice to buy their way out of the line creates a first class and a second class. Maybe priority queues work just fine in other countries, but here in America, there is evidence that they are degrading our common experiences and our basic services. On Spirit Airlines, the more money you spend, the more service you get. $20 to $50.

Is there actually $25? Everybody understand? Sure, you can choose not to pay any extra fees, but, well, good luck with basic service. They don't even serve you a glass of water unless you pay a fee. Never fly unspilled again. Spirit is soft. And while Spirit may be one of America's most unpopular airlines, it's also one of America's most profitable airlines.

What's next? Will we be standing unless we're willing or able to pay extra for a seat? I'm just trying to get to L.A. It's the first day of the fall semester at Santa Monica College, one of California's premier community colleges. I'm standing outside the classroom for an intermediate algebra class. Every seat is taken. There are students sitting on the windowsills and students standing in the hallway.

Our classes are basically completely full. They're 100% full. And it's maddening for us because we pride ourselves in access. Dr. Chui Seng is the president of Santa Monica College. He told me he can't make more seats available because the state keeps cutting his budget. So last spring, Dr. Seng proposed something new. He called it Advance Your Dreams.

Instead of waiting in line, they have access to their class right away. Here's how it would work. The school would open up new sections of the hard-to-get classes, but they would cost more, in some cases 400% more. But with the extra funds, the college would then have the means to make more seats available in the regular sections. For Dr. Singh, Advance Your Dreams was very progressive. It's like a Robin Hood system.

Those who can afford it can pay a little higher and the excess revenues then can help subsidize those who cannot afford the same price. I'd like to call it Advance Your Schemes. Student body president Harrison Wills didn't find anything progressive about Dr. Tseng's plan. They were dividing up the campus and they were saying some courses will be available at normal cost, which is $36 a unit. But we're going to create another tier of the same classes for $180 per unit. So what you're going to have is a competing group of people

applying for the cheapest classes, and then those that don't get it, those that can afford it, will go to the second tier. And so what that means is that that means you have a society where people are advancing based upon their ability to pay. In order to access the new classes, though, poor students would be forced to take out loans or win scholarships. This, Harrison Wills says, would completely change Santa Monica College.

The community college is the greatest social equalizer in California, period. SMC is one of California's wealthier community college campuses. But still, Harrison Wills told me there's a large segment of the student body living below the poverty line. I'm not talking like, you know, struggling working class. I'm talking about poverty. I'm talking about hunger. I mean, I know students who are living in their car. And they said that still, they're actually able to come to SMC and they have hope.

When the Santa Monica College Board of Trustees met to approve a summer pilot program for Advance Your Dreams last April, Harrison Wills and a number of concerned students showed up to protest. I was there to have my voice heard and to share the concerns that other students had. But there was not enough room to accommodate the large number of students who all wanted to speak.

A confrontation broke out with the campus police. Things just got out of hand fast. I got thrown on the ground and I heard screaming and pushing and I heard the pepper spray go off within, I mean, it was like 15 seconds. We won! We won! They pepper sprayed us! The pepper spray incident was a victory for the protesters. The ensuing media blitz led California's Chancellor of Education, Jack Scott, The pepper spray incident was a victory for the protesters. The ensuing media blitz led California's Chancellor of Education, Jack Scott,

to order Santa Monica College to shelve the Advance Your Dream program. On the night of the protest, Harrison Wills says Dr. Tseng angrily dressed him down. He's like, this isn't what I expected from you. I was disappointed in him personally and also at the stand that he took. Dr. Tseng is still baffled by the outcry. Freedom of choice is a fundamental right that we have in the United States. And in this system, when you tell someone that, yeah, you have money, but I cannot allow you to make a free choice because it's not fair. That's just insane.

Advance your dreams, Dr. Tsang told me, is not a two-tiered system. Who can say that this is for the elites when you only have to pay $600 for a class compared to $2,000 for a class in a private sector or even in another public school. This is not a two-tier system. I don't know how you can't call it a two-tiered system. Michelle Pilotti is a community college educator and the current president

of the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges. The idea of having sort of these two, lack of a better word, classes of students, students who can afford courses and students who can't, really creates a disparity. And you could potentially have a system where if you don't have the money, you don't get a course. And that's not what we're all about. California's state college system has offered a first-class education for generations. There are exclusive institutions like UC Berkeley and UCLA, but the UC system was designed to be accessible to everyone through its community colleges like Santa Monica. Two-tiered initiatives, critics claim, subvert the mission of accessible higher education.

Our problem, first and foremost, right now is that the state's not funding us adequately. If we create a revenue stream that allows some colleges to bring in extra dollars to support more of what the state's supposed to be funding, it then creates a disincentive for the state to fund any of the colleges. And, you know, the whole idea of having this huge system that we have is to make education affordable to everyone. Two bills recently put forward at the state level would have made it possible for all community colleges in California to offer two-tiered tuition. Both bills were defeated. But according to Michelle Pallotti and Dr. Tseng, the idea is just on hold for now.

As long as we have funding issues that lead to the restriction of access, those who believe a two-tiered system is an answer will try again. We're going to come back to consider this program again at a appropriate moment. Please continue to hold. Please continue to hold. Please continue to hold. Please remain on the line. Technology renders most of the lines we now wait in invisible. But take a journey across America,

and you will see a lot of people paying their way to the front of the line. Please continue holding. Is this idea of the priority queue, though, that one can pay a fee to jump the line, consistent with American values like fairness, opportunity, and equal access? Please continue to hold. Maybe so. There is another American value, the freedom to choose.

And when fairness, opportunity, and access become options for anyone who chooses to pay, then the priority queue is an American queue. Please remain on the line. But here is my question. If you can't afford the priority queue, are you still in line for the American dream. Please continue waiting. Please continue waiting. Please continue waiting. You have been listening to Benjamin Walker's Theory of Everything.

This installment is called Waiting in Line. This program originally aired on the BBC World Service as part of their Real America series produced in conjunction with the Public Radio Exchange. It was produced by Benjamin Walker, Karen Frillman was the editor, and Bill Bowron did the sound design. Sylvie Covenant was a production assistant. You can find more information about this program,

including links to recent developments with two-tier funding in California at toe.prx.org. And this is where you can subscribe to the Theory of Everything podcast.