Why Can't Shops Be More Like Bus Stops?

Bear with me. Now maybe I'm overly critical on this one. As a Brit, I come from the home of lines (or queues as we like to call them). Furthermore, it is seen as one of the great crimes of British society to cut in line. Worse than murder some say [disclaimer: this is not true]

But some of the recent attempts at forming a line that I have been witness to in NYC have been just pathetic. The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that it's not even the thought of careless people most of the time. It's design problems. Shops are guilty of trying to force people to buy stuff even as they wait in line. This causes congestion and people wandering in and out of lines to grab stuff they can't find anywhere else (I had to do this to grab Chocolate Pretzels at a Whole Foods recently). Thus the integrity of lines are compromised.

Also, subway stations. Oh dear God subway stations. Some of these suck. A harder problem to resolve due to their location and age. I'm guessing when they were built, such a large number of people weren't envisaged to be crowding the platform. This is a similar problem in London. Although at least there, there seems to be an effort to modernize, causing a hit to my wallet admittedly.

But design an area for forming a line well, or simply don't clutter it with stuff, and I'm confident there would be far less line related problems. Look at bus stops. They're just an open area to stand in. I never see problems at bus stops.