Always fun looking at new research. 

Interesting - The SML Small medium and large waits in lift lines.   1 min, 5 min, 10 min seems to be a norm worldwide. 

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00181-020-01872-w

Queue Theory 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queueing_theory

Zardog

Interesting stuff.  But I miss the days when it was easy to find out the cost of a walk up day ticket.  Now dynamic pricing rules, no quotes can be obtained without , “what are you looking for?” - when are you arriving? Leaving?” - “How many days?”  The price of a walk-up ticket is a national security state secret you know.  You can’t get a simple direct answer to a simple direct question.  If you are a powder chaser, who decides to go the evening before, it’s particularly annoying.  It kind of forces you to have bought a multi resort season pass months before.  It’s also got to be a sizable disincentive to young families thinking about trying the sport.

here are 2 great places that post their very reasonable walk up prices online and get lots of powder.  Both are never crowded and have mostly local skiers and are closed a couple of days per week.

losttrail.com  (on the Indy pass)

snowridge.com  (on the Tug Hill plateau north of Syracuse in the lake effect snow belt)

I've often wondered why the corral fences aren't set up to definitively pre-sort the lines by group size.  For instance, take a quad lift.  It seems reasonable to a first-order that the least confusion, jostling, and best efficiency would be to set up:

1 channel for groups of 4;

2 for groups of 2;

3 for groups of 3;

1 for singles.

Next to each other, in that specific order.

Clearly sign them, and the lifty or- even better- automated red-yellow-green light system lets the 4 through, then the 2+2, then the 3+1, back to the 4.  Keeps rolling.  Green = go, yellow = you're next,  red = wait.  This removes a lot of the merge jostling ("hey- it's every other!") and ad-hoc seat filling that stresses the lifty and the customers.  Nearly every chair would be automatically filled to capacity as well, maximizing the throughput.

Obviously some channels will always be longer than others (likely the 2s and singles), and the 3s may often be empty.  But that's fine- if a given channel is empty, skip and immediately roll to the next.  Groups will then self-split, as they already do, but it'll be clear to everyone form the start and not at the last-second merge and "wait- I'm with those guys- damn- ok, I'll be right behind you."  Entropy is defeated, at the liftline merge point :)

cool some actually looked at this. I agree hard to find pricing under dynamic. 

I work in process management. I wish I had access to the data. 

No lines now and all the complainers have gone away. 

Resorts pricing - SML Small Medium and large. a Small resort weekend is about 70+ for window rate

medium is 100$ + and Large is Over 175$ a day.

 This is a great idea, however it counts on people not being morons

skinavy wrote:

I've often wondered why the corral fences aren't set up to definitively pre-sort the lines by group size.  For instance, take a quad lift.  It seems reasonable to a first-order that the least confusion, jostling, and best efficiency would be to set up:

1 channel for groups of 4;

2 for groups of 2;

3 for groups of 3;

1 for singles.

Next to each other, in that specific order.

Clearly sign them, and the lifty or- even better- automated red-yellow-green light system lets the 4 through, then the 2+2, then the 3+1, back to the 4.  Keeps rolling.  Green = go, yellow = you're next,  red = wait.  This removes a lot of the merge jostling ("hey- it's every other!") and ad-hoc seat filling that stresses the lifty and the customers.  Nearly every chair would be automatically filled to capacity as well, maximizing the throughput.

Obviously some channels will always be longer than others (likely the 2s and singles), and the 3s may often be empty.  But that's fine- if a given channel is empty, skip and immediately roll to the next.  Groups will then self-split, as they already do, but it'll be clear to everyone form the start and not at the last-second merge and "wait- I'm with those guys- damn- ok, I'll be right behind you."  Entropy is defeated, at the liftline merge point :)