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  • Background: The Machinery of Freedom

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    Kim Roxas
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    Slugging involves informal carpooling between strangers to use high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes for quicker commutes. It began in the 1970s as a response to congested roads and high gas prices. Drivers pick up passengers at designated locations who need a ride to specific destinations, usually work places, allowing both parties to benefit from the HOV lane. It is most common during morning commutes and helps reduce vehicle travel and emissions. While generally safe, there was one reported crime involving a slugging driver in 2010.

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    CARPOOL SERVICE

    Original Title

    CARPOOL SERVICE

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    Slugging involves informal carpooling between strangers to use high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes for quicker commutes. It began in the 1970s as a response to congested roads and high gas prices. Drivers pick up passengers at designated locations who need a ride to specific destinations, usually work places, allowing both parties to benefit from the HOV lane. It is most common during morning commutes and helps reduce vehicle travel and emissions. While generally safe, there was one reported crime involving a slugging driver in 2010.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    91 views2 pages

    Background: The Machinery of Freedom

    Uploaded by

    Kim Roxas
    Slugging involves informal carpooling between strangers to use high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes for quicker commutes. It began in the 1970s as a response to congested roads and high gas prices. Drivers pick up passengers at designated locations who need a ride to specific destinations, usually work places, allowing both parties to benefit from the HOV lane. It is most common during morning commutes and helps reduce vehicle travel and emissions. While generally safe, there was one reported crime involving a slugging driver in 2010.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    of 2

    Background[edit]

    In order to relieve traffic volume during the morning and evening rush hours, high-
    occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes that require more than one person per automobile were
    introduced in many major American cities to encourage carpooling and greater use
    of public transport, first appearing in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area in 1975. The
    failure of the new lanes to relieve congestion, and frustration over failures of public-
    transport systems and high fuel prices, led to the creation in the 1970s of "slugging", a
    form of hitchhiking between strangers that is beneficial to both parties, as drivers and
    passengers are able to use the HOV lane for a quicker trip. While passengers are able to
    travel for free, or cheaper than via other modes of travel, and HOV drivers sometimes
    pay no tolls, "slugs are, above all, motivated by time saved, not money pocketed".
    Concern for the environment is not their primary motivation; Virginia drivers of hybrid
    automobiles are, for example, eligible to use HOV lanes with no passengers. [2]
    In the Washington area—with the second-busiest traffic during rush hour in the United
    States and Canada as of 2010[3]—slugging occurs on
    Interstates 95, 66 and 395 between Washington and northern Virginia.[4] As of 2006,
    there were about 6,459 daily slugging participants there. [5]
    In the San Francisco Bay Area, with the third-busiest rush hour, [3] casual carpooling
    occurs on Interstate 80 between the East Bay and San Francisco. As of 1998, 8,000 to
    9,000 people slugged in San Francisco daily.[5] However, after bridge tolls were levied on
    carpool vehicles in 2010, casual carpooling saw a significant decline and etiquette
    became more uncertain.[6]
    Slugging also occurs in tenth-busiest[3] Houston,[7][8][2] at a rate of 900 daily in 2007,
    [5] and in Pittsburgh.[9]

    Slugging is shown to be effective in reducing vehicle travel distance as a form of


    ridesharing.[10]
    Slugging is more used during morning commutes than evening commutes. The most
    common mode that slugging replaces is transit bus.[11]
    David D. Friedman's The Machinery of Freedom proposed a similar system (which he
    referred to as "jitney transit") in the 1970s. However, his plan assumed that passengers
    would be expected to pay for their transit, and that security measures such as electronic
    identification cards (recording the identity of both driver and passenger in a database
    readily available to police, in the event one or both parties disappeared) would be needed
    in order for people to feel safe.[12] Although slugging is informal, ad hoc, and free, in 30
    years no violence or crime was reported from Washington D.C. slugging [2] until October
    2010, when former Sergeant Major of the Army Gene McKinney struck one of his
    passengers with his car after they threatened to report his reckless driving to the police.
    [13]

    Etymology[edit]
    The term slug (used as both a noun and a verb) came from bus drivers who had to
    determine if the people waiting at the stop were genuine bus passengers or merely
    people wanting a free lift, in the same way that they look out for fake coins—or "slugs"—
    being thrown into the fare-collection box.[14]

    General practices[edit]
    In practice, slugging involves the creation of free, unofficial ad hoc carpool networks,
    often with published routes and pick-up and drop-off locations. In the morning, sluggers
    gather at local businesses and at government-run locations such as park and ride-like
    facilities or bus stops and subway stations with lines of sluggers. Drivers pull up to the
    queue for the route they will follow and either display a sign or call out the designated
    drop-off point they are willing to drive to and how many passengers they can take; in the
    Washington area the Pentagon—the largest place of employment in the United States,
    with 25,000 workers—is a popular destination. Enough riders fill the car and the driver
    departs. In the evening, the routes reverse.[14][2]

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