The zipper problem

No, this is not a post about John Edwards or Bill Clinton.

It's about traffic congestion -- specifically about the most efficient way to get cars through a bottleneck created when 3 lanes, say, drop down to two. Cynthia Gorney writes:

Nearly every time I asked one of the traffic people to assume the role of the great vehicle arranger in the sky, remote-controlling each of us bottleneck drivers as if we were so many video-game characters, the reply went as follows:

FIRST, EVERYBODY REMAINS UNRUFFLED, without abrupt changes of lane or speed, as the lane-drop comes into view. Everybody takes three deep, cleansing breaths — all right, the experts didn’t say that, but they meant to — and considers both the imminent needs of everybody else and the system as a smoothly functioning whole.

Then everybody begins to slow, not too much, all in concert. All cars remain in their lanes, using all the real estate. ... People in the narrowing left lanes refrain from shooting ahead, while people in the right through lanes — this is hard to swallow, for those of us inclined toward vigilantism, but crucial — leave big spaces in front of their cars for the merging that is about to commence. We resist the freeze-out-the-sidezoomer urge. We prepare to invite them in.

Finally, at clearly marked or somehow mutually agreed upon places, everybody starts conducting beautiful “zipper merges.” That’s the technical term — one-two, one-two or one-two-three, one-two-three — as indicated by the roadway configuration. The process has now worked at its ideal efficiency/equitability ratio: if all have behaved correctly, the tunnel passage has been both benign and, relatively speaking, quick.

The last thing you want to get into is stop and go -- ah, the home drive from Dubai to Sharjah on the Emirates Highway. Slow down together and leave as little real estate unused as safely possible given your mutual speed. Easier said than done.

The culture of the queue

One thing a westerner living in the UAE quickly notices is that in many places there is no concept of a queue. And if a queue is formed sometimes individuals will jump to the front of the line and demand to be served next.

The Abu Dhabi flagship paper, The National has taken note:

Dr Abouallaban, 44, the director of the new American Center for Psychiatry and Neurology in Abu Dhabi, says it is all about stress, disappointment and a lack of respect for others.

Most of the passengers using the buses, he says, are low-paid workers who are boiling with frustration. “They come to Abu Dhabi thinking they will make good money,” he says. “But they find they are not saving anything. They are disappointed. Their families are back home. They have a low tolerance.”

Dr Abouallaban was born in Syria, but has spent most of his career in the US. He moved to the UAE three years ago. So he has both a Western and a Middle Eastern perspective.

The wealthier and better educated might not suffer the same sort of stress but, he says, often they share this disturbing lack of respect for others. “You see it on the streets when people are trying to catch taxis. Sometimes people have almost run over me to get a taxi. They just do not respect others.”
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Local pride that the UAE is so much more polite than the West is, he thinks, misplaced. “People here are more polite than in the States when they are in their family setting. But they are less polite in the street.”
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queuing, in its many forms, is alien to the UAE, says Dr Alnajjar. This does not mean the country is rude. On the contrary, he says, the UAE, especially Emiratis and Asian workers, are scrupulously polite. But there are sharp differences between the Gulf perception of politeness and the West.

“Every society has its own ideas on what is polite,” he says. “In the UK, it is polite to ask a lady on a date. Here it is not. In the UK, it is polite to say to a lady, ‘You are beautiful’. Here it is not. If you go to a man’s house and invite his daughter out, he might kill you.

“In the UK, people will eat in front of you. Here, it is impolite not to offer food if you are eating.”