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Despite its unprecedented nature, however, Queue preparations have been underway for years. “I see a lot of similarities to the plans I developed ten years ago“says Keith Still, visiting professor of crowd science at the University of Suffolk, who in 2011 was among the people who asked Royal Parks of London to develop a system to control queues and security for events such as royal funerals. “We work from the bottleneck, wherever it is“Still says. In this case, it was the security check area at the entrance to Westminster Hall.
Times and logistics
To design the perfect tail you have to consider two variables: the speed with which people reach the beginning of the line (arrival speed) and the speed with which they complete it (speed of service), Still explains. In the case of Elizabeth II’s funeral parlor, the first parameter was dictated by the capacity of the London underground and rail network.
The speed of service on the other hand is more difficult to calculate, because it depends on how quickly people walked past the queen’s coffin. There are different ways to pay homage to the sovereign, which can take different times. For every person who passes quickly with a fleeting glance there is another who decides to linger. The ideal is to make sure that the service speed is equal to or greater than the arrival speed: if this is not the case, the queue is destined to increase.
But in the case of die-hard fans of the British royal family determined to pay homage to the queen, there was also another risk: “A major concern is that standing for twenty hours may be too much for people“explains Still. According to the London Ambulance Service, during the days the Queen’s body was on public display over four hundred people lined up they received medical assistance and 17 were taken to hospital.
Although Kant acknowledges that these days’ queue in London cannot be called perfect, 14 hours of waiting is not that bad as you might think. Live monitoring of the queue by the British government communicated the estimated length and duration of the queue, ensuring transparency on waiting times. This meant that anyone who decided to queue was aware of what to expect, despite the hitches (in some cases, the service has indicated an area that is located as the start of the line in North Carolina). The monitoring service was also complemented by regular updates on social media indicating where to start the queue, or to don’t queue when the maximum capacity was reached.
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