loops

Your tax dollars at work... oh boy.

http://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech...reening/89096/

Spiff

• Stop checking IDs
• Stop checking BPs
• Stop making passengers remove their shoes.
• Stop limiting liquids.
• Remove most of the items from your "prohibited" items list
• Fully publish all rules and regulations so passengers are unlikely to be surprised by requirements at the airport.
• Use WTMD + ETP as primary, WBI only as an option for those with implants/similar WTMD concerns.

You are now free to lay off a large portion of your worthless Workfare employees. Please send me cash - I don't accept checks from lying, weasel agencies.

jkhuggins

Before everyone jumps in with the next verse of "Abolish the TSA (The Remix)", might I suggest reading the original article and/or the actual solicitation?

The solicitation is focused solely on the redesign of checkpoint queues (i.e. the lines everyone stands in). The "queue" is defined as extending from the WTMD/WBI machine backward to the last person standing in line. This is an exercise solely in queueing theory, not in anything else.

There's nothing wrong with looking at the question of queueing for checkpoints; we've seen how various other proposed systems (remember the "black diamond lane", anyone) simply didn't scale up at all airports. TSA is at least attempting to think "outside the box" in one, very small, limited area. Such thinking is to be encouraged.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled TSA-gripe-fest.

shenxing

Removing the "special" lines for elite flyers would better distribute load across the lines.

Ari

Airlines control that, not TSA. And that would damage the economy-- I'd fly less and others would too.

RadioGirl

So the contest is based on a false premise right from the start. What a surprise.
But the elite lines are only a "problem" because the non-elite lines are so long, which IS TSA's fault.

In the civilized world there's little need* for an elite line at security because the "regular" lines move at a decent pace.

*Oh, sure, they've got them in places like SYD and DXB and so on, but IME it doesn't really make any difference.

Carl Johnson

No, other people would fly more because they would get a better experience and that would balance out your flying less because of getting the same experience as everyone else.

tkey75

Uhh, no. Even if all elites stopped flying, the lines would be marginally smaller as one lane would be added. If more people fly because they feel better that there is no elite line and we are all equal at the checkpoint, the lines will be right back to the same size, if not bigger, as you suppose.

It's all BS anyway and is a deflection from the fact that the holdup is at the actual screening point. You can reorganize the lines any way you wish, but it still takes the same amount of time to actually screen people.

jkhuggins

Maybe ... maybe not.

I'm not a frequent flyer by any means. But when I do fly, I tend to find that the bottleneck in the screening process is just past the TDC, when passengers have to disgorge all of their items into bins for screening. Take your shoes off, take your outerwear off, pull electronics out, pull liquids out ... all while attempting to shuffle forward as those ahead of you finish pushing their stuff into the X-ray machine. And that's assuming that you were smart enough to already empty your pockets and belt into your carry-on luggage before you even began the process.

Usually, by the time I'm done with all of that, there's no line at the AIT/WTMD, and I make it through before I get to the receiving line at the end of the X-ray machine, where the process reverses.

I could foresee a system which might allow more people to disgorge their stuff at the same time, which might speed up that part of the process. But I'm not an expert in queueing theory, so I have no idea what such a system could look like.

gsoltso

I like this idea, it generates thought about the situation from people that are not necessarily involved in this industry on a frequent basis - thus engaging critical thinking from a different viewpoint. As JKHuggins said above, it generates thinking outside the box (although in a very limited way), which can approach challenges in creative and new ways. I would much rather that TSA and DHS (and any other number of alphabet organizations that interface with the public as a normal part of their job) do this more often. It is more cost effective to have a collective of external minds brainstorm at the beginning, than it is to have a team of senior management (and the attached assistants) engaged in a design process from the beginning. Even if you only get a couple of ideas that wind up being implemented, this process cost you nothing but some administrative costs to collate and distribute, and the award money at the end - which is still much less than taking and appointing several full time employees to do the same process. On the other end of the spectrum, if you have zero implementable ideation generated by this competition, you have succeeded in proving the presented ideas do not work and more intense design work needs to be done. With all the millions wasted in government spending every year, adding more process like this to the mix could help prevent some of the waste.

Ideas and events like this show me that there are some creative minds in this organization (in a good way), and that these folks are trying to address known issues in constructive ways.

DeafBlonde

Bolding mine: See Spiff's post #2. His suggestion would solve the bottlenecks that you speak of, but alas, DHS/TSA is not really interested in actually solving problems, just creating more so they can keep their bloated agencies going, and going, and going...

gsoltso

You know, the "Black diamond" lanes were a solid theory, it just simply did not scale to the airport for a number of reasons. I would love to see something similar like a family lane, because families tend to have much more going on, what with chasing kids around and having more gear to run through on average. I anticipate more room to divest and perhaps a more aesthetic approach to lane technology, but lets face it - the basics are going to remain the same unless someone stumbles across some revolutionary pattern of thinking that has eluded the industry since the inception. That is another reason I like this contest, it includes folks from outside the industry to promote different approaches.

shenxing

Like what Spiff posted? Like screening in airports in the whole rest of the world? Like pre-TSA US checkpoints?

WillCAD

No West, the basics are going to remain the same no matter how far outside the box people think.

The basics are that a line is only as fast as the choke points. No line can move faster than the choke points. And the choke points in this case are the TDC and the screening c/p at the end of the line.

If the c/p can process 400 people per hour, the maximum speed the line can go is, DUH, 400 people per hour. You cannot make the line go faster than the c/p, because the line STOPS at the c/p.

The ONLY way to speed up the lines is to speed up the screening process at the end of the line, which can only be done by implementing some or all of the basic changes mentioned by Spiff above.

Increasing the speed limit on a highway to 5,000mph will not get you through a toll booth any faster, because you still have to STOP. AT. THE TOLL BOOTH. The only thing that increases toll throughput is to implement a tolling regimen that eliminates the stops, such as electronic tolling, or no tolling at all.

This isn't rocket surgery. But it sure does cost as much as rocket surgery, doesn't it?

pontifex

Is "stop wasting time forcing people to get undressed for screening protocols that do nothing to make anyone safer" an example of "some revolutionary pattern of thinking"?

We know shoes, for instance, pose no threat, yet your agency maintains a shoe carnival that makes no one safer and dramatically slows down lines.

We know liquids pose no danger, yet you maintain a scientifically invalid 3.4-1-1 policy that makes no one safer and dramatically slows down lines..

We know, thanks to the weekly blotter posts at that laughable excuse for a blog your agency runs, that your nude body scanners have never detected a dangerous object, and that they are many times slower than WTMDs, and that your agency's new obsession with belts is because of the limitations of the nude body scanners rather than any actual threat belts pose. Yet you keep using these useless scanners that make no one safer and dramatically slow down lines.

If you want faster lines, cut down on your own smurfing stupidity.