WASHINGTON
On a recent Friday
morning, David LeBlanc
donned his Army uniform,
kissed his wife and four
children goodbye, and
pointed his blue
Mitsubishi toward a
commuter parking lot near
his home in Lake Ridge,
Va. In another part of
this Washington, D.C.,
suburb, Mildred Bowen put
food out for her cat,
packed a lunch, and,
grabbing purse and
briefcase, left her house.
Colonel LeBlanc and Ms.
Bowen had never met, but
within minutes of parking
in the commuter lot, Bowen
and another stranger were
climbing into LeBlanc's
Mitsubishi and driving off
together.
This is not the first
time Bowen has hopped into
a car with total strangers
- she has done this
virtually every workday
since 1995 as part of an
ingenious commuting system
that the Virginia
Department of
Transportation (DOT) says
ferries an average of
6,500 people a day.
It originated during
the gas crunch in the
early 1970s, when
carpoolers in the northern
Virginia suburbs
unexpectedly found
themselves short a
passenger. Cruising past a
bus stop, they would offer
anyone waiting there a
free ride in exchange for
the extra body that would
grant them access to the
High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV)
lanes. Bus drivers dubbed
these pseudo-carpoolers
"slugs," after
the fake coins used to
scam free bus rides.
The name stuck, and the
quid pro quo proved such a
win-win that morning
slug-lines formed at
pick-up locations in the
suburbs. Similarly, slugs
formed evening lines at
intersections in downtown
Washington as well as
across the river at the
Pentagon and various
business hubs.
Today, riders save up
to $12 in fares and
parking fees and, along
with the drivers, anywhere
from 30 to 50 minutes each
way compared with driving
in the regular lanes or
taking public
transportation.
"So you have this
system that moves
thousands of people every
day," LeBlanc
enthuses as he drives past
a river of twinkling brake
lights in the choked lanes
to his right. "Nobody
is really in charge, and
it's organized by the
people who use it. Where
else would you find
that?"
Nowhere, it seems -
though with gas becoming
as valuable a commodity as
time, it might behoove
others to look to Virginia
as a model.
To take hold, however,
slugging requires three
key conditions, says
LeBlanc. He ought to know:
LeBlanc wrote a research
paper on slugging in 1997,
authored and
self-published a guide to
slugging, and in 1999
launched a website - www.slug-lines.com
- that offers information
and discussion forums.
Slugs, he says, need a
handy and free commuter
parking lot; a backup mode
of transportation, usually
a nearby subway, bus, or
commuter train stop; and,
crucially, a carpool lane
separate from regular
lanes (the better to be
policed) that requires
three occupants per car.
HOV lanes requiring
only two people don't do
the trick. Finding one
rider isn't that difficult
and, as Bowen points out,
there is safety in
numbers. Settled in the
backseat of LeBlanc's car,
briefcase nestled at her
feet, she says she
"would be far less
likely to hop into a car
with one person unless I
knew him."
Even with the security
of a fellow slug, female
commuters are cautious.
"When I
started," Bowen
recalls, "if there
were two men in the car
that I'd never ridden with
before, I wouldn't get in.
Then you get used to
seeing the same cars and
the same people, and you
get more
comfortable."
The same applies to
neophyte drivers.
"When I lived in
D.C.," says Caitlin
Mackintosh, a slim blonde
in the afternoon slug-line
near a bus stop in Crystal
City, "I used to pick
up slugs and drive out to
my karate class in
Virginia. A friend came
with me the first few
times." She, too,
grew so comfortable with
the process that when she
moved to Virginia, she
chose an area with
slug-lines.
Few slugs are ever
stranded. "In 26
years," says Stewart
Deavers as he waits near
the Washington Monument
for a ride home,
"I've been stuck
three times. Once I shared
a cab back with this
lady," he adds,
pointing to a woman ahead
of him in the line. Like
most slugs, they know each
other by face, not by
name. She nods in
agreement but doesn't
engage; she stares instead
at the stream of traffic,
alert for the telltale
slowdown that marks a
driver in search of slugs.
In a city where the
police chief recently
declared a crime
emergency, slugging has
proved remarkably safe in
its 30-plus-year history,
thanks in great part to
its home-grown rules of
etiquette. If it gets
dark, for example, slugs
never leave a woman alone
on the slug-line, and if
slugs don't like the look
of a car or its driver,
they can pass.
Mostly, however, slugs
"pass" because a
car lacks air-conditioning
or looks, as LeBlanc puts
it, "kind of
shaky," or is
uncomfortable.
"There's a guy that
pulls up in a [Mazda]
RX-7," LeBlanc says,
eliciting a laugh of
recognition from Bowen. He
describes the sports car's
backseat as "unfit
for man or beast. You have
to sit like this - "
simultaneously, he and
Bowen cock heads to one
side.
Most of the guidelines
deal with courtesy - slugs
leave radio and
temperature controls to
the driver; they don't
chat endlessly on their
cellphones; and if the
driver stays silent, so do
the slugs. Should the
driver give the go-ahead
to chit-chat, conversation
needs to steer clear of
sex, religion, and
politics. This doesn't
mean that slugs don't
exchange useful
information. Mr. Deavers
recalls a ride where the
driver spoke of looking
for a new office manager.
By commute's end,
Deavers's fellow slug was
on her way to a job.
And politics do get
discussed when the issues
affect slugging. Large
numbers of hybrid cars are
exempt from the HOV's
three-person requirement,
and the DOT plans to build
an additional lane in 2008
to accommodate
single-occupancy
toll-paying cars -
"HOT." It's an
acronym that perfectly
describes slugs' reaction
to both policies. The DOT
says it will keep the
number of HOT cars in
check with toll hikes, but
many slugs aren't buying
it. "That makes sense
in theory," says Ms.
Mackintosh, "but the
way people spend money
here, they'd pay even
higher tolls for the
privilege."
She pauses while a
Cadillac pulls up -
leather interior,
satellite radio. "I
scored," she says,
smiling. Minutes later,
speeding home in luxury,
Mackintosh and the driver
say they will vote against
HOT because the additional
cars will eventually clog
the HOV lanes. Take away
the advantage of speed,
and slugging could become
obsolete. Until that sad
day, slugging will
continue to thrive.
Although gas prices
locally are as high as
$3.29 a gallon, nobody is
thinking of making slugs
pay to ride.
As driver Charles
Stewart exclaims as two
strangers climb into his
van, "They pay me a
lot: I save gas in the HOV."
And as long as employers
provide subsidized or free
parking in town, drivers
will find it economically
viable to use their cars.
And slugging, as Bowen
says, will continue to be
"a normal process.
Well," she adds,
laughing, "normalcy
is relative, I
suppose."
