Reston Spring

Reston Spring
Reston Spring

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

"Slugging — The People’s Transit," Miller-McCune Magazine, March 7, 2011

In Washington, D.C., commuters have taken thousands of cars off highways via a homegrown rideshare system known as “slugging.” Can the government create more slugs — without stepping on any?

by Emily Badger 

Workers who have come down from the surrounding high-rise offices begin to line up on a sidewalk in downtown Arlington, Va., across the Potomac from the nation’s capital, about 3:30 in the afternoon. They stand in a perfect queue, iPods and newspapers in hand, and they look, by all indications, like they’re waiting for the bus.

Public transit never shows. But, eventually, a blue Chrysler Town & Country does. The woman behind the wheel rolls down her window and yells a kind of call-and-response.

“Horner Road?”

“Horner Road?” repeats the first woman in line.

“Horner Road!”

And two women get in the van, heading, presumably, for Horner Road. . . .

Every day, an estimated 10,000 people in the Washington, D.C., area are participating in a rideshare program they've created called "slugging." (Monica Lopossay)

Read the rest of this excellent, long article here.

The success of slugging raises some questions about the need for other, much more expensive forms of public transit. 

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