What a difference a good gate agent can make!
Flew out of JFK today and the gate agent had everybody clear the boarding lanes and the area around them. She had SKY and Zone 1 on one side of the gates and 2 and 3 on the other side. She walked out and asked people to show them her boarding pass and shooed them over to where she wanted them. At the begininning, there were only Prem passengers allowed in the Sky Priority lane. I happened to be in first and was able to board without being in a rugby scrum. She even had people in a sort of queue going out laterally away from the gate area. It just goes to show what a little enforcement of rules and authority can do. People can actually be shamed into civilized behavior. And she did it all very nicely, too.