I've been staying in a hotel near the Ferry Building in San Francisco. At one point I looked out of the window and saw a small group of people standing near the entrance to a pier at which a ferry was tied up. A few minutes later I looked again and a line of people perhaps 200 metres in length had assembled going three parts round the dock and stretching along the main dockside road. No one seemed ready to try to push in anywhere when the ferry crew eventually opened the gate to let people on board. And I was also impressed by the spacing of those in the queue - no one was looking over the next person's shoulders or invading their personal space. It was all very organised, civilised and efficient.
So over the next few days I watched Americans queuing ('lining up' in the local terminology) elsewhere - at other ferry points, at a tour company depot, at a bus stop - and everywhere there was the same sense of order, fairness and appropriate behaviour. At one ferry dock the crew member who was about to open the gate to let us on actually told us not to line up so we could embark more quickly across a wide gangplank.
This effective American queuing reminded me of travelling on the metro systems in Shanghai and Beijing where queues form before each train arrives - the queues running back from the marked places at the exact point where the doors of the train will open.
Why does queuing work in some places and some cultures but not in others? I pose that question because although the Chinese in China seem to me to be very orderly queuers (at least in Shanghai and Beijing - it might be different elsewhere) when they are in a group abroad they surge in a mass to do everything together at exactly the same time, including all trying to get in the same door of a train together.
In my experience, most nationalities I have met can queue but often don't. Not long after the reopening of the enlarged Musée du Louvre, with the I.M.Pei pyramid, in Paris I remember waiting for a perhaps an hour in a very good-natured queue composed almost entirely of French people. But when I catch a bus in Paris it is generally everyone for themselves.
I fear that in England we are starting to lose the art of queuing, particularly at bus stops where knots of people form and rush together for an arriving bus rather than lining up in the 'traditional' way. I accept, of course, that queuing isn't always appropriate - for instance where there are tram systems or articulated buses with a variety of entrances. There is a sort of informal queue at some of the busiest stations on London's Underground during the rush hour - actually more like a series of waves of people standing several deep on the platform with each successive train taking away one wave and the next moving forward.
I'm sorry to have to point this out, but the only country where I have never seen effective queuing is Italy. Indeed I still have a strong memory of an occasion at Catania Airport, in Sicily, where the authorities were trying to impose a barriered queue snaking back and forth to reach security but where a significant proportion of people (men and women, and of all ages) were ducking under the barriers to get straight to the front. That nearly ended in violence.
So I was impressed by the lines in San Francisco. But what I wonder is this: as cities become more multicultural and international tourism grows in scope bringing people from very different backgrounds and habits together, will we see the establishment of the free-for-all as the norm? Or will the orderly queues ('lines') I have just witnessed in San Francisco be maintained as the fairest approach to waiting?
So over the next few days I watched Americans queuing ('lining up' in the local terminology) elsewhere - at other ferry points, at a tour company depot, at a bus stop - and everywhere there was the same sense of order, fairness and appropriate behaviour. At one ferry dock the crew member who was about to open the gate to let us on actually told us not to line up so we could embark more quickly across a wide gangplank.
This effective American queuing reminded me of travelling on the metro systems in Shanghai and Beijing where queues form before each train arrives - the queues running back from the marked places at the exact point where the doors of the train will open.
Why does queuing work in some places and some cultures but not in others? I pose that question because although the Chinese in China seem to me to be very orderly queuers (at least in Shanghai and Beijing - it might be different elsewhere) when they are in a group abroad they surge in a mass to do everything together at exactly the same time, including all trying to get in the same door of a train together.
In my experience, most nationalities I have met can queue but often don't. Not long after the reopening of the enlarged Musée du Louvre, with the I.M.Pei pyramid, in Paris I remember waiting for a perhaps an hour in a very good-natured queue composed almost entirely of French people. But when I catch a bus in Paris it is generally everyone for themselves.
I fear that in England we are starting to lose the art of queuing, particularly at bus stops where knots of people form and rush together for an arriving bus rather than lining up in the 'traditional' way. I accept, of course, that queuing isn't always appropriate - for instance where there are tram systems or articulated buses with a variety of entrances. There is a sort of informal queue at some of the busiest stations on London's Underground during the rush hour - actually more like a series of waves of people standing several deep on the platform with each successive train taking away one wave and the next moving forward.
I'm sorry to have to point this out, but the only country where I have never seen effective queuing is Italy. Indeed I still have a strong memory of an occasion at Catania Airport, in Sicily, where the authorities were trying to impose a barriered queue snaking back and forth to reach security but where a significant proportion of people (men and women, and of all ages) were ducking under the barriers to get straight to the front. That nearly ended in violence.
So I was impressed by the lines in San Francisco. But what I wonder is this: as cities become more multicultural and international tourism grows in scope bringing people from very different backgrounds and habits together, will we see the establishment of the free-for-all as the norm? Or will the orderly queues ('lines') I have just witnessed in San Francisco be maintained as the fairest approach to waiting?
