![]() "Pentagon!" or "Fourteenth and Constitution!" yells each line's head and designated moderator, in a process that observes an unspoken but strict protocol when vehicles pull up soliciting riders. Meanwhile, every weekday morning between the Capital Beltway and Dale City 20 miles south, hundreds of slugs form lines at half a dozen locations. Maryland has studied, but has yet to create, HOV lanes on its freeways. Specialists say that on the Dulles Toll Road, which recently converted one lane to HOV, the absence of a physical barrier between it and regular lanes encourages cheating, which in turn discourages slugging. ![]() ![]() Other major Virginia highways, such as Interstate 66, lack ready access to alternative bus service and expansive parking lots that slug lines need. Transportation officials politely call commuters such as Hanson "instant car poolers." They, in turn, use the moniker given them years ago, tradition has it, by bus drivers who compared them to counterfeit coins.įairfax and Prince William county officials estimate that there are at least 1,000 white-collar, government and military slugs riding along I-95 each weekday morning, a phenomenon that has but one counterpart in the nation: commuters who catch rides in the HOV lanes across the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.Īccording to transportation specialists, slug lines are likely to remain peculiar to I-95 in the Washington area. In return for picking up Hanson and at least one other rider, a driver gets to zip along in the less-congested HOV lanes of Shirley Highway, which can halve commuting time. Hanson said the symbiotic nature of slugging usually results in him getting a free lift within minutes. At dawn one recent morning in Springfield, he and a dozen or so other commuters were waiting in line for a stranger to pull up and whisk them downtown to work. "I figure I save $80 a month doing this," said Curtis Hanson, who has slugged from Springfield to his Department of Veterans Affairs office in the District for the last two years. This growing corps of Northern Virginians who form pickup car pools for their daily rides to work in the HOV lanes of Shirley Highway (Interstates 95 and 395) say their impromptu commuting style is both efficient and economical. They call themselves slugs and are proud of it.
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