Selling the length#
of somebody else’s queue#
SLOP2710 · Week 8
Disney, in four moves#
2021 — FastPass becomes Genie+, $15/day
Oct 2022 — surge pricing
Jul 2024 — Lightning Lane Multi Pass, $20–45
Autumn 2024 — Premier Pass, $329–449 a day
You already paid to be at the front.#
You paid in minutes.#
A queue is an auction denominated in time#
The people who reach the front are the people willing to bid ninety minutes of their life.
A queue and a price sort the same people
in the same order,
and only one of them sets the money on fire.
Three objections, hardest last#
Wealth, not valuation. Willingness and ability.
A reason not to fix the queue. Revenue depends on standby being unpleasant.
It reclassifies the good. Organs, emergency care, a school place.
The question nobody asks#
What happens to the standard queue?#
Spare capacity → everyone gains, objection is symbolic
Shared capacity → every skip is somebody’s delay
Ten per cent buy priority.#
What happens to the mean wait?#
- W with a pass
- —
- W standby
- —
- W₉₀ standby
- —
- W everyone
- —
- W₉₀ standby, no passes
- —
Priority is work-conserving.
Nobody serves faster, nobody goes home,
so the mean cannot change.
Where this has actually been done#
Singapore 1975 — paper licences; electronic from 1998
London 2003 — flat daily charge, revenue to buses
Stockholm 2006 — trial, then referendum, then permanent
New York 2025 — first in the US
What makes a price acceptable#
is where the money goes#
Priority inflation#
At 80% uptake: a pass buys 5.6 minutes instead of 3.0.
Same price.
The value of a fast lane is not a property of the lane. It is a property of how few people are in it.
The checklist#
- Spare capacity, or shared?
- Who is in the slow lane?
- Where does the revenue go?
- At what uptake does it stop working — and who is watching?