Easy, Slugger

This is my third day up in Rosslyn, and people often ask me, “where are you from?”  To which I reply that I am from Stafford County, to which I hear “you commute all the way from Stafford?  How do you get here?”  They jump into an excitable frenzy.  Clearly I’m crazy, I’ve sold out.  My soul now belongs to the (angry) God of my checking account.  Like it didn’t before I started coming up here.

When I explain to people that I live in North Stafford, and I get here by slugging, I raise more questions than I answer.  Usually the conversation goes like this:

“Slugging?”
“Yep.  It’s like hitchhiking.”
“As in hitchhiking?  Like, you get a ride with a stranger?  Like, it’s hitchhiking.  Really?”
“Yes.”
“Aren’t you going to lose a kidney?”
“I only need one.”

I’m surprised, actually, about how many people don’t know about this, and also why more people don’t do it.  Slugging is a semi-organized, free way to get from Northern Virginia (as far south as Fredericksburg) to the DC area.  The term’s origin?  According to Wikipedia:

“The term slug (used as both a noun and a verb) came from bus drivers who had to determine if there were genuine passengers at their stop or just people wanting a free lift, in the same way that they look out for fake coins—or “slugs”—being thrown into the fare-collection box.”

As an introduction: there are High-Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes that run from just beyond Quantico to the District in the morning, and back from the District in the afternoon (the lanes are controlled by gates and Virginia State PD, who make the switch).  When they are in “HOV-Mode,” only cars with three or more passengers can legally drive on them.  The lanes were created in response to the perpetual disaster that is I95/I395, and to encourage commuters to carpool.

Which is why, every morning, I drive a whopping 5 miles to the commuter parking lot, and join a line of hitchhikers, or sluggers, who are trying to provide a service (the ability to drive in HOV lanes) while getting a benefit themselves (free ride).  Drivers stop at the front of the line, and call out where they are going, e.g., Crystal City, Pentagon, or Rosslyn, and people proceed to get into the car.  It’s not perfect, this morning I got tired of waiting, got into a Crystal City car, and took the Metro the rest of the way, but generally the supply and demand seems to be in a fascinating equilibrium.  The drivers typically stop next to the Metro Station nearest the destination, which, fortunately for me, is hardly two blocks away.

It works well, and let me tell you, sailing by the people who are not in the HOV lanes, stuck in the spasmodic Hell of morning volume, is schadenfreude at its best.

Why don’t more people do it?  Why drive when you can get to DC for free?  I have no idea.  Dignity, maybe.  Who knows, but they’re missing out.

As gas prices continue to rise, there have been talks on the unofficial slugging website (http://slug-lines.com) to being driver tipping, but the general consensus is that the system is not broken, and should not be fixed, as well as concerns about income reporting for tax purposes, (only the government employees would bring this up, I suspect) and that the relativity of gas prices for all drivers (HOV or not) doesn’t break down the supply and demand.  That is, the drivers would have to get up to DC anyway, and the incentive of driving in the HOV lanes as opposed to being stuck in regular volume (read: wasting even more gas) is still too great.

It’s cool stuff.