Twenty years ago when I was a translator in Berlin, it was routine to take 20-30 minutes or more in line every time you drove through Checkpoint Charlie across the border to the East. It never got any better -- just depended on how popular the day was for travel. Your car might be under a good deal of scrutiny from the men in drab green as they collected your passports and paperwork, peered through the windows and rolled mirrors under the chassis, or you might be waved through without much trouble, but it was never efficient.
As we get closer to the anniversary of the 9/11 attack and have already had one potential threat for that day defused, the security will surely be stepped up. If you're heading in or out of LaGuardia, Dulles or O'Hare you may be thinking, "why don't we just skip the 11th on the calendar like some elevators skip the 13th floor?" But for all the hassle and imposition on our freedom, there's one huge difference between the process at Checkpoint Charlie and O'Hare.
The free market deals with the balance between freedom and security just like it does with MP3 players and SUV's. Apart from next week's inevitable delays, the system has smoothed out pretty well since being stepped up five years ago. If you time your travel well, don't bring check-on luggage or scissors, and move through the line without asking (out loud anyway) if lip balm is on the list of prohibited items, the whole screening process has gotten fairly reasonable in my opinion. And by the way, it seems to be working well in terms of foiling terrorist plots as well.
OK -- so the cold war is in the history books now but before you get steamed about the lines at the airport, consider that Checkpoint Charlie never got any more efficient until the day the bulldozers came through.
