5 ms·

Ask HN: Improving “The Queue”

6 points by rcarr 4y ago

So I was looking at the queue that is developing in London and is expected grow to be miles long and couldn’t help but think this seems like a classic engineering problem, a physical counterpart to the kind of thing you’d get asked about in the system design part of a development interview about dealing with peak traffic and/or batching. The current approach to me seems really archaic, single queue, First in First out, huge waits, a lot of stress on the transport network as people pile into London unplanned etc. I feel like it would have made way more sense to have a website ready where you could have registered and then received a QR code and an allocated slot to go view the queen. I brought this up on Reddit but it got a bit of push back, people saying how it would be unsuitable for the elderly etc but I still think there would be ways round it like a standard queue run alongside the allocated system. Obviously you can’t scale it horizontally like you would in a traditional computer science way by adding duplicate queens in duplicate Westminster halls so I was just wondering what the big brains of HN would come up with if it was under their control?

readonthegoapp 4y ago
I know there are some queue killing services out there but I never understood how they worked Like one is in Pasadena or something Their stuff may be used at dmvs Qless.com No affiliation Think I talked to them once about a gig
h2odragon 4y ago
One of the biggest obstacles to the smooth progression of humans through the viewing area is the individual variation of gaits. We need a moving walkway, flat escalator type thing to regularize the progress of the procession. Then speeding it up becomes a simple control question, and people can be fired through the hall as fast as the machines permit.
mikewarot 4y ago
I'd make damned sure that there are restrooms and medical help to take care of the people who may have over-estimated their ability to wait in the line. These are people who are witness to the death of someone they have a strong parasocial relationship with, and this is their one chance to pay their respects. The length of the queue, and the experience of those in line are sharing, is an expression of that respect, minimizing it is disrespectful. Not everything needs to be commodified and sold back to us. -- My experience when there is an "online check in" (like at the hair-cut place) is that most people in the queue aren't actually there, and it doesn't actually help. I got there at just the right time, and the 7 people who showed up later ended up having to wait in order anyway.
- krapp 4y ago
  >The length of the queue, and the experience of those in line are sharing, is an expression of that respect, minimizing it is disrespectful. Is it really an expression of respect, or of how little Britain's government cares about the peoples' dignity, health and time versus shutting the entire country down for a mass civil ritual of obsequient suffering before the nobility?
  - mikewarot 4y ago
    Nobody is being compelled to stand in that line. They're not shutting the country down, they might shut down part of the Government, of which She was the head. We have pomp and ceremony when our head of government changes in the US. We also have State funerals for select people.
    - krapp 4y ago
      >We have pomp and ceremony when our head of government changes in the US. I don't agree with it here, either, but at least our heads of state are ostensibly normal citizens and don't claim power by divine right or purity of noble blood. In the context of a funeral for royalty, the spectacle just seems more implicitly degrading. But that's just my opinion - I despise aristocracy of any stripe. Seeing stories about people's cancer treatments being cancelled and rescheduled, schools and businesses shutting down, police snatching people off the street for any form of protest against the King, a multi-billion dollar cost to the taxpayer which the royals could easily have paid out of pocket, etc. makes the whole thing seem like an exercise in class humiliation.
- mikewarot 4y ago
  This is what the queue was like, and about: https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/politics/article/the-queue-queen-elizabeth https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/politics/article/the-queue-que...
toast0 4y ago
Queues form when capacity doesn't meet instantaneous demand. You can't really increase the instantaneous capacity of viewing a coffin, or the throughput of it, if you prefer that view. You can of course try your hardest to make that part of the line orderly and moving. In order to reduce instantaneous demand, you can do things like charge a fee (unpalletable, I'm sure), extend the hours and days of viewing, offer reservations of some sort (maybe for people who need accomidations, maybe when the line gets over a target length, give people wrist bands that entitle them to line up at another time where only wristbanded viewers will be let in, etc). Changing the state religion to demphasize visiting coffins could help. Having the monarch reign for a really long time helps, because if every subject wishes to see the coffin of each of their soveirgns, fewer soveirgns helps.

6 points by rcarr 4y ago

readonthegoapp 4y ago

I know there are some queue killing services out there but I never understood how they worked Like one is in Pasadena or something Their stuff may be used at dmvs Qless.com No affiliation Think I talked to them once about a gig

h2odragon 4y ago

One of the biggest obstacles to the smooth progression of humans through the viewing area is the individual variation of gaits. We need a moving walkway, flat escalator type thing to regularize the progress of the procession. Then speeding it up becomes a simple control question, and people can be fired through the hall as fast as the machines permit.

mikewarot 4y ago

I'd make damned sure that there are restrooms and medical help to take care of the people who may have over-estimated their ability to wait in the line. These are people who are witness to the death of someone they have a strong parasocial relationship with, and this is their one chance to pay their respects. The length of the queue, and the experience of those in line are sharing, is an expression of that respect, minimizing it is disrespectful. Not everything needs to be commodified and sold back to us. -- My experience when there is an "online check in" (like at the hair-cut place) is that most people in the queue aren't actually there, and it doesn't actually help. I got there at just the right time, and the 7 people who showed up later ended up having to wait in order anyway.

krapp 4y ago
>The length of the queue, and the experience of those in line are sharing, is an expression of that respect, minimizing it is disrespectful. Is it really an expression of respect, or of how little Britain's government cares about the peoples' dignity, health and time versus shutting the entire country down for a mass civil ritual of obsequient suffering before the nobility?
- mikewarot 4y ago
  Nobody is being compelled to stand in that line. They're not shutting the country down, they might shut down part of the Government, of which She was the head. We have pomp and ceremony when our head of government changes in the US. We also have State funerals for select people.
  - krapp 4y ago
    >We have pomp and ceremony when our head of government changes in the US. I don't agree with it here, either, but at least our heads of state are ostensibly normal citizens and don't claim power by divine right or purity of noble blood. In the context of a funeral for royalty, the spectacle just seems more implicitly degrading. But that's just my opinion - I despise aristocracy of any stripe. Seeing stories about people's cancer treatments being cancelled and rescheduled, schools and businesses shutting down, police snatching people off the street for any form of protest against the King, a multi-billion dollar cost to the taxpayer which the royals could easily have paid out of pocket, etc. makes the whole thing seem like an exercise in class humiliation.
mikewarot 4y ago
This is what the queue was like, and about: https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/politics/article/the-queue-queen-elizabeth https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/politics/article/the-queue-que...

toast0 4y ago

Queues form when capacity doesn't meet instantaneous demand. You can't really increase the instantaneous capacity of viewing a coffin, or the throughput of it, if you prefer that view. You can of course try your hardest to make that part of the line orderly and moving. In order to reduce instantaneous demand, you can do things like charge a fee (unpalletable, I'm sure), extend the hours and days of viewing, offer reservations of some sort (maybe for people who need accomidations, maybe when the line gets over a target length, give people wrist bands that entitle them to line up at another time where only wristbanded viewers will be let in, etc). Changing the state religion to demphasize visiting coffins could help. Having the monarch reign for a really long time helps, because if every subject wishes to see the coffin of each of their soveirgns, fewer soveirgns helps.