In my morning drive to office, there is a 4-5 km stretch of single lane road that has three major junctions that makes the entire stretch go at a slow crawl. I come to the first junction. Folks who want to go right are aligned to the right with indicators on, we crawl at slow pace and bikes are somehow making their way forward utilizing every inch of road. We make some space on the left for folks who want to turn left. Now there comes a guy on the left with right indicator on and goes straight to end of line, another guy behind gets emboldened since there is a leader and scrambles behind him, a mad rush follows, guys who waited patiently tries to assert their priority, cars go head to head or rather rear view mirror to rear view mirror to see who has guts – in the ensuing mess, somehow we make it to other side in parallel with the guys who cut in from left. It is single lane road, so someone has to adjust to avoid hitting the folks waiting for bus on the sidelines or the oncoming bus in the other lane – one gives in finally and the show continues.
Come the next junction, same tug of war continues with another set of folks who cut in. In between, a Wagon R gets almost pushed to the side by a Ford Endeavor – usually it is Wagon Rs that lack the courage to push through and hold on.
So we come to the third junction, the Wagon R is behind me now and we are crawling slowly waiting in the line, I see another guy going in the left as far as he can go. There is a bus stop to the right, so traffic is blocked with another set of folks waiting behind stopped buses, peaking to see if they can somehow get ahead. Now here comes a Maruti cruising through the empty right lane ignoring the long queue and tries to squeeze into the little space I had left between me and the guy in front. That snaps me, I close the gap, Maruti is stranded in front of the stopped bus and yet another one that is desperately trying to overtake. Instead of feeling victorious I feel bad.
Later, I was doing some company research in Wikipedia, at the end of it, references had this – Avenue Queue: One long wait inspired career shift. A MIT professor who did Queue research due to a bad experience – the results helped form innovations in supermarket checkout, highway tolls etc. Now I may not be able to switch careers to fix anything, but interesting to see that sophisticated research and implementations happened decades ago in developed countries to put in queue control systems, but we are still following the Most Aggressive First (MAF) method than the First Come First Served (FCFS). Anyway got to know that what I experienced is called “queue rage”.
Come the next junction, same tug of war continues with another set of folks who cut in. In between, a Wagon R gets almost pushed to the side by a Ford Endeavor – usually it is Wagon Rs that lack the courage to push through and hold on.
So we come to the third junction, the Wagon R is behind me now and we are crawling slowly waiting in the line, I see another guy going in the left as far as he can go. There is a bus stop to the right, so traffic is blocked with another set of folks waiting behind stopped buses, peaking to see if they can somehow get ahead. Now here comes a Maruti cruising through the empty right lane ignoring the long queue and tries to squeeze into the little space I had left between me and the guy in front. That snaps me, I close the gap, Maruti is stranded in front of the stopped bus and yet another one that is desperately trying to overtake. Instead of feeling victorious I feel bad.
Later, I was doing some company research in Wikipedia, at the end of it, references had this – Avenue Queue: One long wait inspired career shift. A MIT professor who did Queue research due to a bad experience – the results helped form innovations in supermarket checkout, highway tolls etc. Now I may not be able to switch careers to fix anything, but interesting to see that sophisticated research and implementations happened decades ago in developed countries to put in queue control systems, but we are still following the Most Aggressive First (MAF) method than the First Come First Served (FCFS). Anyway got to know that what I experienced is called “queue rage”.
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