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The frustration and dangers of queues

This article was going to be about video analytics, or perhaps the increasing professionalisation of security. Instead, after a few weeks of travelling and having to deal with volumes of people, vehicles or planes in a whole range of environments, it is about queues. Queues are something that most of us experience almost every day, that we often take for granted, yet they affect us physically, emotionally and can even lead to life threatening issues.

Queues keep us from chaos, yet poorly implemented solutions can often cause more chaos then they solve. Problems are sometimes difficult to anticipate, but even when experienced often the learning is not translated by the organisers into solutions in the future.

Queues are responsible for some major fatalities, as in the Ellis Park tragedy some years ago and other stadium disasters. I still remember at the gates of a world cup qualifier some years ago, a father holding his child up in the air as the mass of people trying to get in the exit compressed and squeezed each other to near danger levels. The potential for disaster is only a handbreadth away in such scenarios.

Today just before writing this article, I made my way from Pretoria to Randburg along an N14 where traffic was crawling due to an accident. That I took the route only because another accident had reduced traffic speed on the highway I intended to take only made my feelings worse. However, the highway deteriorated into a potential war zone as a range of vehicles from buses to trucks and cars decided that they could use the yellow line as an alternative highway and went speeding down the side of traffic.

In reply to this major traffic infringement, some vehicles in the standard lane decided to enforce the traffic in a vigilante type manner and moving over to the yellow line attempted to halt or deter these reckless queue jumpers. The cut and thrust between the parties created a number of unexpected 4x4s on grass verges from standard vehicles and a series of brinkmanship escapades that probably made the original accident site pale in comparison.

It is a wonder that more people were not seriously injured and there were not accident sites littering the entire stretch of the N14. Seriously, where are the Metro Police when you need them. [The author obviously needs Anger Management classes if he thinks a little traffic chaos is reason enough to interrupt the Metro Police’s napping schedule – Ed.]

Efficiency is effective

Queues seem to bring out the best and worst in people and are emotionally charged experiences. The English are perhaps the most expert in managing these kinds of dynamics and the customs queues at Heathrow even in the most massive periods are still an orderly progression of people being funnelled in a particular direction.

Flying into Frankfurt airport this week, I was stunned by a seething mass of people all trying to get to customs counters in some kind of rough intermingling queue-based chaos. Where, I thought, was the traditional German efficiency? Further surprise was to follow when in a perfect example of a check-in queue only being as fast as its slowest choke point, a whole plane of passengers waited for a single SAA airline person to inspect everybody’s passport before they could board. Fortunately, one SAA member of staff took it on herself to identify passengers who did not need visas and quickly started checking ID details and delivering them through at a faster pace.

While these were just uncomfortable experiences, emerging down the escalator to ORTIA customs revealed that people were massing in a queue at the bottom of the escalator preventing those coming down from getting off and creating a potentially dangerous situation. Why do people actually create dangers and need to be protected from themselves? It seemed to fly in the face of logic for people to cluster at the bottom of an escalator when there is ample space in the area leading away from it.

In groups people seems to lose much of their capacity for rational thought. Fortunately, the problem was recognised by one of the customs officials who moved a substantial number of overseas visitors to the correct area of customs and alleviated the jam. While I was able to navigate these circumstances, I wonder how well my elderly in-laws would have been able to cope with what were some difficult and physically demanding circumstances.

Effective management

Most people are willing to endure the discomfit of queues in order to attain what they want, despite emotional frustration and general murmuring of discontent. However, the relative deprivation generated by queue jumping can quickly escalate frustration to out and out anger. The jousting in the traffic on the N14 is one such example.

The scope for corruption and abuse also increases proportionally to the lack of effective queue control, with road borders to Zimbabwe and Mozambique being famous for such abuse – where there is a lack of control people quickly move to take advantage of it for their own purposes. Those who have driven in rush hour traffic in Dar Es Salaam will know the true meaning of traffic anarchy, with surges of street invasions from side streets when a small gap appears in traffic.

The ironic thing with queues is that they can be managed relatively easily. Some direction here or there, more effective signage to channel people, increased guidance by queue managers, firm rectification of queue jumpers, and quick and effective response to issues often resolve potential problems before they can become far worse.

Updating people on status is important so they do not feel ignored or powerless and still have some sense of progression. Facilitating the process at all points, particularly choke points is critical. Moving people to individual counters before they have to be called decreases the wait time required for people to move from the queue point to the different counters. This is something that Heathrow is so good at, and I have to give credit to customs at ORTIA who are applying this to speed up the handling at customs counters. Making sure that people are in the right lanes or queues removes the frustration of getting to the front only to be told that you are in the wrong queue and have to go the back of another one. With queues you can never have too little communication.

Electronic solutions

Electronic measures, when they work, are making big differences in queuing at airports. Online check-in, use of bar codes to swipe when boarding and self check in counters are making life smoother. Unfortunately, bag check in seems to be lagging this, and even the best managed airports have poor organisation of bag check in counters for those doing on-line check in. Crowding and queue management is one areas where CCTV video analytics can easily and usefully be applied to identify excessive crowding or lengths of queues to management. Ironically, however, the use of a few quiet words or directions from a person on the ground can still accomplish much more than all the technology available in guiding effective movement of people.

Dr Craig Donald is a human factors specialist in security and CCTV. He is a director of Leaderware which provides instruments for the selection of CCTV operators, X-ray screeners and other security personnel in major operations around the world. He also runs CCTV Surveillance Skills and Body Language, and Advanced Surveillance Body Language courses for CCTV operators, supervisors and managers internationally, and consults on CCTV management. He can be contacted on +27 (0)11 787 7811 or craig.donald@leaderware.com

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