Originally Posted by
RichardKenner
Indeed there is. In fact, the person I shared an office with at NYU was doing her PhD thesis on queuing theory as it applied to a computer interconnection network.
As you may remember from that class, the behavior of a queue is heavily dependent on the distribution of arrival times. If you make reasonably-simple probabalistic models of those times, the math isn't that hard, but any simple models won't reflect reality. The closer the model reflects reality, the more complex the math. And it's made even more complicated by the non-uniform departure rate.
More important with the CP, is that the queue varies based on the variability of the time to get through the queue. As passenger times begin to vary widely, particularly if there are outliers, like me and my NEXUS card at the TDC, that create statistical anomalies that make the math much more difficult. Add to that the tendency of all variability on the queue due to TSA inconsistency to move the time in queue up without corresponding variability down, as things get busier, the time per person likely increasws.