TSA willing to pay $15,000 for best ideas to help shorten airport lines

Just went through the security theater myself no less than an hour ago and along with everyone else: Eliminate TSA. We all know it's a joke, I even had my pat down guy joking with me about how ridiculous the whole thing is. On the way out to my destination I had 100' of 8-wire cable in my carry on, a multi-parameter water quality probe and various solutions for calibrations (fit into the appropriate containers) and no one said anything. On the way back the multi-parameter probe was questioned like mad. Their practices are inconsistent and ineffective. However, they are effective at slowing travel down and spending tax payers monies.

Get rid of the TSA. I'll take my $15,000 now.

Seriously though, $15k is a pittance for what they're asking. If they had to employ someone to do that, they'd have to pay them way more than that, and the economic upsides of what they're gunning for are quite substantial. This feels like it's along the lines of holding a logo design contest and paying the winner $25.

One way might be to decrease the ridiculous amount of security theater they employ.

The longest I've ever spent between the front of the line and the concourse was ~2 minutes. The screening process doesn't need to get shorter, just more parallel.

Have more lanes. Hire more staff, and schedule them more evenly. Every time I've waited in an obnoxiously long line, additional lanes were extant but closed. Meanwhile there seemed to be at least 5 staff standing around doing nothing. Have them man a second lane and cut the waiting time in half?

There's no inherent reason you can't solve this problem, the limiting factors are just the size of the screening room and the payroll budget.

Have each airline administer its own security. If you want the machines, the patdowns, and long lines for 'security' there will be an airline for you.

> It’s asking so-called “solvers” to build on TSA’s existing PreCheck program..

They expect to add a process to a failed process and expect a different result? Ultimately they'll add one more machine, one single line that feeds into the scanners, and more promotion of the Nexus program... and in five years, another $15k for another idea that changes nothing.

I'll elaborate further on the "just abolish it" idea: let each airline manage its own security. They have every incentive to balance customer experience with meaningful security.

Especially if you leave them open to civil liability in case they are negligent and bad things happen with one of their airplanes.

Easy, abolish the TSA

Go to Israel, copy what they are doing there.