I had a recent conversation with my table at a wedding about the concept of slugging, which made me think it could make for a good post on this site.
Slugging, sometimes called casual car-pooling, is more like organized hitch-hiking. In cities with HOV lanes, which will hopefully include Columbus someday, queues of passengers develop at bus stops near freeway ramps. Drivers who need extra passengers stop, pick up a couple of strangers, and everybody gets a faster ride to their destination. The system is described on Slug-Lines.com, a site dedicated to slugging in the DC area:
The system of slugging is quite simple. A car needing additional passengers to meet the required 3- person high occupancy vehicle (HOV) minimum pulls up to one of the known slug lines. The driver usually positions the car so that the slugs are on the passenger side. The driver either displays a sign with the destination or simply lowers the passenger window, to call out the destination, such as “Pentagon,” “L’Enfant Plaza,” or “14th& New York.” The slugs first in line for that particular destination then hop into the car, normally confirming the destination, and off they go.
No money is exchanged because of the mutual benefit: the car driver needs riders just as much as the slugs need a ride. Each party needs the other in order to survive. Normally, there is no conversation unless initiated by the driver; usually the only words exchanged are “Thank you” as the driver drops off the slugs at the destination.
The rules and etiquette of slugging are also interesting and will answer a lot of FAQs that are bound to come up. The name “slugging” is apparently related to the fake coins called slugs and was coined by bus drivers who would stop for passengers at a stop, but would be waved off by these “fake” passengers who were actually waiting to slug.
Cities with slugging other than DC include San Francisco, Houston, Seattle, and Pittsburgh.
You may have also seen a less organized variation of slugging on Curb Your Enthusiasm when Larry David picks up a hooker to get to the Dodger game faster.
Has anyone reading this been a slug before? Any interesting stories? If Columbus ever had HOV lanes, would you consider slugging or does that just seem a little too dangerous for our conservative Midwestern values?
Hah, I love this idea. I’ve never known of its existence despite having lived in Seattle for a time in ’05/’06 (I didn’t have a car, though).
I would consider slugging, but probably not alone at first. I used to hitch hike in Maine and Ohio when I was younger and a lot more naïve and didn’t run into any problems.
Thanks for posting this! Let’s hope that HOV lanes make it to C-bus at some point.
I was a “slugger” and a “sluggie” for 8 years in the Bay Area, BTW we called it Casual Carpool.
I lived in Oakland but worked in SF. The pick-up point was a block from my apartment; the car filled with at least 3 people would use the HOV lane (saving about 20 minutes) and get accross the Bay Bridge without a toll ($3); the driver would drop the passengers off at the Bus depot (Transbay Terminal) in SF. The system was awesome in that everyone saved time and money and every once in awhile you would get into good conversations or hear new music. I cannot think of any particular bad experience, except for the occasional bad driver (either too slow or too aggressive) or lame car (1966 Bel Air with exhaust problems).
We’ve developed a system that works in a similar way to the slug lines. We call it ‘flexible carpooling’. Check it out at http://www.flexiblecarpooling.org.
We are trying to get demonstration projects up and running. You see, to my knowledge no-one has successfully introduced a new slug line anywhere. The ones that are there have been around for a long time, and the authorities are not sure they are a good thing.
My calculations show that they are more energy efficient than a bus service, unless the bus manages to be more than 30% full all the time (that means counting the deadhead miles and the shoulder trips when it is only half full or less. And if you use flexible carpooling in your city, you save the cost of the bus, the driver, and the fuel, and keep the need for new services at peak times to a minimum.
Thanks for the opportunity to comment on your blog.