"It's 30 minutes, I'm definitely going to miss my flight home and I should call my family to let them know."

"It's 30 minutes, my kid has time to go buy a snack and eat it before we go through security."

"No, don't use the bathroom yet, the line looks long but it's only a 5 minute wait."

"I really hate airports, but it's a little less frustrating when I can see the wait time."

"The taxi line is 20 minutes long, maybe it's worth taking the subway instead."

etc.

What gets measured gets fixed.

Presumably the TSA managers will be rated based on their wait times, and therefore accountable when they're too lazy to staff the right number of people.

Last week I almost missed my flight at Oakland because they had everyone funneled through a single scanner. Two scanners were idle because they were "short staffed". That's not an accident or bad luck. That just means the manager was too lazy to do their job correctly.

I wouldn't call the manager lazy. It's more of lacking clear information that they need to make properly informed staffing decisions. I bet they have incentives tied to cost more than wait time. Instead of optimizing for cost and a gut feeling of need to meet a certain service threshold they can now use this data to predict capacity needs more accurately. Hopefully incentives are correctly set so they don't just ignore these new numbers.

My worst airline-related example of this involved a flight from Paris to Philadelphia. It was scheduled to arrive around 4PM. However, the departure was delayed about four hours because the plane was late getting in to Paris, which in turn happened because the plane had mechanical trouble in Philadelphia.

There were a lot of people on this flight who were connecting on to other cities. We landed just barely in time to catch the last flight of the day to many of those cities, but most people had to be rebooked since that wasn't their original flight.

So we get off the plane and about two hundred of us need to be rebooked, and we get to the counter to discover a grand total of three people working there. To process two hundred people. Who all needed fast service. For a problem that anyone could have seen coming literally a day in advance.

A lot of people unnecessarily spent their nights in hotels rather than with their families that night, because nobody looked at what was going on and said, we should bring in some more people for this.

But yes, I'm sure it's all about bad incentives. Whoever takes the hit for overtime staffing doesn't also take a hit for hotel vouchers, even though it probably would have been cheaper overall for the airline to staff up and get people on their flights. (Not to mention the benefit of pleasing your customers.)

Follow the money, and all becomes clear.

It's right there in the article:

> With this data, JFK is able to display accurate wait times to reduce passenger frustration and to notify staffing if areas in the terminal are becoming congested, so staff can identify and rectify bottlenecks before they escalate.

If you're confused about the first part, there is research that shows waiting for an unknown amount of time causes more anxiety than if the wait time is known. See e.g. http://davidmaister.com/articles/the-psychology-of-waiting-l...

Reminds me of the story about baggage claim at Houston's airport. They kept getting lots of complaints about how long it took for people to wait for their bags after getting off their flights. To fix this they moved the claim area further away from the gate, it took people longer to get there but the same amount of time for the bags to reach the claims area. Complaints went way down.

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/opinion/sunday/why-waitin...

In Austin's airport there are several security lines that you can choose from. Each line shows its average wait time as well as the average wait time for the other lines. It's helpful to be able to see that the lines closest to you is 20 minutes but the line just down the terminal is only 5 minutes.

I love that feature. It's also incredible to me how many people either ignore it or don't know it's there.

I have never noticed it before Where is the wait time information at Bergstrom?

Sort of at the front of the security line. Right before you get to the area where you load up the conveyor belt. It is visible from the back of the line.

Same in Atlanta. Also, if the main security is backed up and the other security areas are faster, there will actually be an employee directing passengers to the faster one.

Brilliant. This should be implemented everywhere.

Might be useful when deciding on whether or not to have another beer before heading to the departure gate ;)

An indefinite wait is about a million times more frustrating than a wait of known length, by its very nature. So long as the number is reasonably accurate, it's a much nicer experience.

It's extremely practical, too. There is a lot you can do based on that number. For security, if the wait is extremely long and your flight is soon, you can try to plead your case to the security people. They'll often let you jump the line if your flight is departing soon, so yes, you can actually say "I guess I'll hurry." The information is available even if you're not in line, so you can plan accordingly.

For customs, you can't do much about your own situation, but you can tell people who are waiting for you how much longer you expect to be.

Showing people information like this removes uncertainty and makes them feel more calm and in control, even if they can't necessarily act on the information immediately. It promotes the idea that the airport believes that user time is valuable, that the airport cares about performance, and that they are trying to optimize processes when possible and provide useful information. This contrasts strongly with the attitude that one normally associates with airports, which is that the entire travel process is insanely uncertain and no one working there gives a shit about you. This improves both passenger and staff morale (as staff are the obvious targets of undirected passenger anger and frustration) and makes the process feel more seamless.

Yeah, I'm not sure the signs will help people, it's kind of out of their hands - but I like the idea of airport staff being able to spot bottlenecks more easily and shift resources where they can.

One of the benefits of doing this can be found in the psychology behind the existence of progress bars in software.

Removing uncertainty provides for a better end user experience

There's also some psychological tricks you can play with the time estimates. When it takes less time than was estimated people don't mind the wait as much and can come out way happier. Disney is one of the kings of these kinds of tricks in their parks it's really interesting.