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The historically long security lines currently snaking through U.S. airports are the painful result of extreme circumstances. Callouts, no-shows, and resignations by Transportation Security Administration workers fed up with a lack of pay during a partial government shutdown, combined with a bump in spring break travelers, have created unusually congested airport security checkpoints.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
For the architects and airport authorities that work together to design these heavily regulated spaces, it\u2019s the kind of convergence you can\u2019t exactly plan for. But, according to some of the designers of these spaces, airports are increasingly incorporating design features that can help them manage extreme security lines in the future.<\/p>\n The lines, though currently caused by TSA worker shortages, are actually governed by the airports themselves and therefore are the airports\u2019 problem. \u201cThere are regulations, but what the TSA is really interested in is the point from where you have your last document checked, called the TDC<\/a>, to the actual [scanning] equipment,\u201d says Ty Osbaugh, principal and global aviation leader at Gensler<\/a>, a design and architecture firm. \u201cThat\u2019s their land. How the queue works is purely up to an airport.\u201d<\/p>\n How big that queue gets, though, is out of the airports\u2019 and their designers\u2019 hands.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Controlling the lines leading up to the security checkpoint takes a lot more than setting up a maze of stanchions. Osbaugh says airports carefully plan their pre-security, or landside, spaces to manage flows of passengers that can vary wildly during different times of the day and different days of the year. Building flexibility into this area, which can often share space with ticketing areas, allows for the lines to adapt to the crowds and circumstances.<\/p>\n Gensler is currently working on a $9.5 billion redesign of Terminal 1 at John F. Kennedy International Airport<\/a> in New York City, and Osbaugh says the landside space was designed with softer edges to be able to accommodate overflow. \u201cWe\u2019ve got a garden that\u2019s [adjacent], so if the queue starts to back up\u2014God forbid that it does\u2014now people have that extra space to be able to queue instead of backing into the ticketing areas and everything,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Other airports, including some currently experiencing incredibly long security lines, don\u2019t have this kind of flexibility. \u201cThat\u2019s the problem that we see in Hartsfield right now,\u201d Osbaugh says, referring to the Hartsfield\u2013Jackson International Airport in Atlanta, where travelers have been advised to expect four-hour wait times<\/a>. \u201cThe checkpoints are boxed in by hard elements on both sides. So it\u2019s just trying to figure out how do you have that pressure relief valve in the queue?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\nFlexible space allows for overflows<\/h2>\n