By now Swami must have lost all his nails and Surya all her hair, so I guess I am a tad late with the answer to this puzzle.
The answer is that pass holders should use the rightmost lane. The reason is simple. Non pass-holders, by definition, tend to be infrequent travelers. Therefore, they tend to know less about which lane to take, and they tend to take the lane with the smaller queue. During peak hours, the rightmost lane, with pass-holders will be really long, but traffic there will also move faster than in the other lanes. If non pass-holders understood this fact, they would know that it is to their advantage to take the rightmost lane. But the moment a sufficient number came to know the right answer, it would no longer be true!
In fact on weekends, this is not true, as the traffic is lower and it does not disproportionately favour pass-holders. Nice no?
Surya has got the answer right, but umm… I distinctly remember giving away the answer at the Bloggers Meet, and I clearly remember that Surya was among those who heard my answer with rapt attention, so I can only conclude that she is one of those who are good at dozing off while pretending to pay attention 🙂
hey…i honestly dont remember u giving away the answer…and i didnt hear it if at all u did so…i read the puzzle only after the meet though, coz i had never been to ur blog previously…k just in case this isnt really boring u and if u think am not dragging this puzzle too far…i wud like to offer another solution coz i have re-thouht on it yesterday…and i feel that this could be a better solution than what i said before….so here goes….
there are 2 stages to this:
1) the right lane(the one for the pass-holders) should be indicated with a huge board or sumthing of the sorts which clearly mentions sumthing like ‘special lane – double the normal charges’…this will help avoid non-passholders from entering the lane at the 1st place and this maybe better than charging them a fine after they come into the lane coz thats even more time consuming(given the fact that every true indian wud indulge into a huge brawl with the toll guys for having fined them,no change,etc.)
2)also the pass-holders’s PASS(which may be a tiny slip of paper or sumthing) itself should have a printed instruction which says that ‘use the right lane only’…this shud be done just to avoid confusion that the special lane charges are not for them and holds true only for the non-pass holders.
The advantage of this solution over the former is that your hint will not hold true here…i mean even if the non-pass holders know about this, they will still not take the right lane as it mentions clearly of the special charges…
keep the puzzles flowing in….i really like these….am also planning to go thru sum old puzzles u have posted but since the answers to those are out…half the fun dies down there….
cheers!!
Good suggestion, but sadly, that too is taken.. Sorry Surya. 🙁 I guess the best way to implement is to use a signboard. “Pass holders free. All others Rs. 50”