Originally Posted by
drewguy
The Clear and Pre-Check lines usually merge into one, IME. Assuming there isn't a meaningful number of non-Pre people signing up (and just who would say "I don't have Pre but now I'll sign up for clear"?), the only difference is you'll have a shorter wait to get past the DL/BP checker in the Pre-line, and more people lining up at the eye-checker.
The issue isn't that you have the same number of people being now processed into two lines instead of one. It's that if CLEAR is an express entry to the front of pre-check, and I'm in the normal pre-check lane, even people who arrive after me will go ahead of me. So you're not just contending with all the people who have arrived to pre-check before you, but also those who arrive to CLEAR after you. It's still all one set of screening equipment, which is the real bottleneck, so wait times for regular pre-check people could be longer on average, during peak times.