Saturday, July 28, 2007

Transportation Security Administration TSA

The TSA here in the USA has a very big job. They are charged with protecting the millions of travelers who travel daily in, out, and around the country.

All travelers should spend at least a few minutes getting familiar with security basics here at the TSA "for travelers" web page here. Most important is managing your liquids, toothpaste and other gels using the 3-1-1 rule.

Overall the TSA website suffers from the typical bureaucratic challenges of telling people much more than they need or want to know about the organization while leaving key details about travel too thinly discussed. TSA is a place where it would be very advantageous to have a blog team with access to up to the minute information about delays, lines, airport and airline security information and then post up to the minute on their blog to help travelers with access get around.

An example of "travel inefficiencies" that create lose-lose situations came up Thursday on our trip home from PHL Philadelphia. We wanted to visit the shopping/dining section of PHL because we had several hours to kill, but because of the odd setup at PHL this would have required us to either stand in a HUGE line for D concourse and then find a way to C concourse vs walking in to E (with no line!) which was where we needed to be to leave. I'm sure if I knew the place inside out I could have used the bus system more effectively, but given that PHL so heavily promotes the shopping and dining area you'd think they'd arrange things such that you could easily hang out there without worrying about missing a flight. The discrepancy in line length was odd as well and I've seen this very often. TSA seems to use humans where machines would be better and perhaps vica versa. As Thomas Edison pointed out -- there is a better way - find it (please...!).