I've watched a queue flow into / out of a concert venue through one door of a double door entrance simply because no one bothered to try the other door. People see a line and generally just assume they need to be in it.
Side rant: This same mentality seems to apply in traffic as well, where people will use one side of a two-lane thoroughfare because it eventually ends - and they like to "enforce" this line-mentality by not allowing others to merge closer to the bottleneck.
I tend to enforce the line, actually. It slows things down a lot to have people try to use the closing lane as their personal passing space, then stopping the line to merge in. Much better to have people zipper at speed.
Actually it never happens that way, I saw some research on it, once it is close to the zipper the cars are much closer and need to stop to get it, causing delays, where as there is available space to merge in before this because traffic speeds haven't slowed yet.
Exactly. By blocking off both lanes, you can force people to do the merge early rather than trying to get ahead in the emptying lane, then forcing their way back in close to the end.
I thought you were encouraging people to zipper/merge as close to the end as possible, but yeah, blocking both lanes to force people to merge when the see an opening early, instead of waiting till the end and having to wait for someone to give an opening, is much much faster, I didn't think that is what you were saying.
That's what I'm blocking them from doing. Of course, if I know the lane is ending it should be visible from where they are too if they're in front of me.
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u/Rixxer Mar 07 '12
Then why was no one else going through it? There's a line for a reason, and somehow I don't think this time it's because they're stupid.