Poor infrastructure breeds its own etiquette

Lamenting the recent rash of pay-to-jump-the-line enticements pushed by amusement parks and ski resorts as well as airlines, "Matthew J.X. Malady" (that's a pseudonym, right?) writes an eloquent tribute to the eroding social achievement of the queue:

This process [of forming lines] may not be fun, but it’s fair. Curse lines all you like, but we would be doomed without them. Unless you’re simultaneously the strongest, smartest, fastest and most universally capable human being on the planet, you should be thankful that lines exist and that, for the most part, people use them in ways that make life less miserable, not more. Which is to say the line is not a persistent social nuisance. It’s one of our most noble collective achievements.

I came to this via Timothy Noah, Jeremiah of inequality, and was led in a Twitter exchange to think about a relative bright spot where the new classism has not yet penetrated: commuter trains. I ride New Jersey Transit into Penn Station in New York, a prime example of inadequate U.S. infrastructure which, on the plus side, has induced regular commuters to develop their own complex, site-specific queuing etiquette.