With more and more congestion slowing everyone down on our way to work and polluting our air, Washingtonians and Virginians are finding alternative ways to commute.
“Slugging,” as the pros call it, is a unique version of carpooling. Commuters line up at local metro (subway) stations and are picked up by drivers interested in gaining a rider or two so they can drive in High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes. Your mother may have warned you never to hitchhike, but slugging is an organized system with its own set of rules, proper etiquette, and specific pickup and drop-off locations.
The advantage is that while all the single drivers are sitting in traffic, vehicles with a couple or more people are cruising down local highways and getting to work faster with less per person pollution.
And the best part is that it’s FREE because both the driver and the slug (as riders are called) benefit.
Slugging has been around in some form for about as long as there have been HOV lanes in the Washington area, sometime in the early seventies. You’ll have to click here if you are interested in the full story of the commuting method.
If you think this sounds like something you are interested in but don’t live in the Washington, DC area (or, heck, live in MD and wonder why there aren’t slug lanes going to DC from your side of the city) learn how you can set up slug lines locally. It may take some time, but it’s estimated that slugging can save serious dough each year. Calculate what your savings could be.
