[eli]

Shared carpooling (called "slugging" here) has a been a viable commuting option for people in the DC area for decades. No money changes hands; the point is that a car with 3+ people can use the much faster HOV lanes.

http://www.slug-lines.com/Slugging/About_slugging.asp

[joezydeco]

No money changes hands

This might be a small detail that matters big if you start driving for Lyft. What does your personal auto insurance policy cover if a paying passenger gets hurt in an accident in your car?

[calbear81]

Lyft has a $1M insurance policy to cover their drivers. Here's an incident: http://www.cnet.com/news/after-fatal-lyft-crash-insurance-qu...

[genwin]

That's a nice chunk but insufficient nowadays. (The 24-year old in that article might've been able to make several $million in his remaining career.) The Lyft driver could still end up on the hook.

[travisp]

It's certainly possible, but it's unlikely. The Lyft driver's own assets are likely small, and most lawyers suing the driver would rather settle for an amount within the $1 million insurance policy, rather than risk getting nothing by going to court to try to get more than the insurance policy.

Even many doctors don't have malpractice insurance above $1 million (depending on speciality and state) -- most policies are $100K-$300K/claim, $1MM-$3MM/all claims (http://jop.ascopubs.org/content/3/5/274.full). So Lyft is providing more liability insurance than many doctors carry.

If you're demanding absolute 0% risk for the Lyft driver financially, this would not cut it, but very little anywhere is absolutely no risk.

[bluthru]

So about 3 days in an American hospital?

[Igglyboo]

How the hell can they afford that?

[prostoalex]

My liability portion is $250,000 each person / $500,000 each accident and State Farm only wants $30 a month for it.

[joezydeco]

That's a commercial rider on your personal policy?

[judk]

"Commercial" is only expensive because higher mileage is higher risk. If you aren't doing a lot of miles per year, it won't be more expensive. Lyft's insurer probably has some mileage math worked into the premium. Or Lyft self insures and knows exactly how much mileage they are covering.

[prostoalex]

I see what you're saying, no, that's just the personal policy.

[jeffasinger]

For one, it has a $2,500 deductible.

It is also only active during a Lyft ride.

[cwilson]

The thing is, I've never heard that term until now. I lived in the DC area for two years and worked with quite a few commuters. It's cool that it's a concept but there hasn't been mainstream adoption to the point where it's as easy as an app in your pocket until now.

If a tree falls in the woods...

[evanb]

There are signs all over downtown, if you look for them.

http://farm9.static.flickr.com/8098/8585051792_3f22025467_m....

[rhino369]

It's a fairly ubiquitous concept in DC. Hell, the website Zoe goes to work from in House of Cards is named after it.

[eli]

Hm, I'd assumed that was a reference to the newspaper/typesetting term "slugline". But maybe it's both.

[ghaff]

I'm not sure the "slugline" term is common for that meaning; it's typically (don't know how widely it's still used) just slug. But it's a pretty obvious and clever derived term to combine slug and headline and come up with slugline.

Slug line (two words) is apparently a screenwriting term--which I didn't know.

[eli]

I don't think slugline was derived from headline. On old linotype machines, the slug was literally a line of metal.

[rhino369]

That might be it actually.

[atwebb]

I'd assumed it was because they followed the trail left by politicians, but your explanation is less sticky so I'll go with that.

[oostevo]

It's extremely popular between DC/North Arlington and the southern and western suburbs.

I used to work in Crystal City, and on my commute home I would see dozens of people -- probably more than 30 most days -- lined up at the designated slug line stop.

[cwilson]

That's crazy that I never heard about it. Is it a recent thing? Very cool that it has taken off regardless, and I suppose serves as a proof of concept for Lyft/Uber.

[apendleton]

Not recent at all; Wikipedia says it started in the DC area in 1975, and I definitely remember people using it when I was a kid, which would have been early '90s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slugging

[bennylope]

It's more popular in certain geographic and industry pockets. I used to see long lines at the Pentagon and Crystal City for slug riders every afternoon/evening.

[oostevo]

Yeah, it's definitely confined to certain demographics. It's especially popular among government/defense types in Virginia. There are a couple of benefits that make it popular with them -- namely that it's free and the system is primarily designed to take you to the far-flung suburbs (where the cheap housing and good schools are).

Given that, I doubt Lyft (marketed towards urban millennials who have smartphones and are cool with riding around in cars with mustaches) and Slugging (mostly used by staid, middle-aged, middle-income workers) are going to compete with each other.

(Still kicking myself for not finishing that app for Slugline-like ridesharing 6 or so years ago :) )

[cowsandmilk]

You clearly have not lived in Woodbridge. There are literally thousands of commuter parking spaces just for people slugging into the city.

For instance, 2,425 parking spaces just for people slugging into the city[1].

[1] http://www.slug-lines.com/AM_Lines/Horner_rd.asp

[russell_h]

Neat idea, how is that enforced?

[eli]

I don't have hard data, but I think it's more common than you think. We have one employee who does it every day and I know 1 or 2 others. I would imagine everyone who lives in e.g. Woodbridge knows about slugging.

[mikeash]

Swing by the south Pentagon parking lot around 5PM and you'll see people lined up on the sidewalk looking for rides, and cars lined up looking for riders so they can take the HOV lanes on 395. You may not have been in the right place at the right time to see it, but it's extremely common in the right places.

[nemothekid]

Likewise in SF/Oakland - http://sfcasualcarpool.com/

[legohead]

How are HOV lanes in DC? In SoCal my experience has been that if the traffic is bad, the car pool lanes are just as backed up.

[cmsmith]

Having lived only in DC and SF bay area, I find HOV lanes to be much faster relative to traffic in DC. The data is less reliable, but I also observed HOV cheating to be much more common in CA, and enforcement to be stronger in DC.

[snowwrestler]

There aren't any HOV lanes actually in DC that I know of.

395 and 66 are two interstates that connect DC to the Virginia suburbs. The HOV lanes on 395 are usually more open and faster than the main highway. 66 is entirely HOV inside the Beltway during rush hour, so if you want to go that way at all, you need passengers.

Virginia just added HOT (passengers or pay) lanes on the Beltway itself; these are usually very clear because you need a transponder to even travel within them legally, and most people haven't bothered to get one. Maybe because the Beltway doesn't actually go into the city, so the utility is low for rush hour.

[whoopdedo]

There isn't enough highway in DC to make express lanes worthwhile.

The benefit of HOV on 395 & 66 comes from having limited access. The lanes get crowded during rush hour, but they still move faster because of less merging & exiting. When traffic is all moving in the same direction at the same speed it flows smoother.

The changes to the Springfield interchange did a lot to prevent backups by reducing the amount of lane changing necessary to get on and off the Beltway.

[peterwwillis]

In cities with more striking poverty, like Baltimore and southeast DC (admit it, it's basically a separate entity from DC) there are other forms of transportation too, like hacks[1] and hawkers [2], and the VANS of latin america [3].

There are many reasons for these kind of underground economies to exist, but one of the most striking ones to me is race. Try asking a black friend in DC whether they get picked up by cabs as easily as their white counterparts. Then there's both the drivers and riders, who have so little cash they can't afford the extras imposed by a traditional transportation company. That's when there's even a form of transportation at all; VANS exist solely to fill the empty void left by the largely nonexistent public transit of Brazilian favelas.

Other concerns (seriously, you should read the first article) include price and time: "Hale has practical reasons for putting his own safety at risk. "Cabs are too high nowadays," he says. "Most of the time, if you're not going too far, a hack is only $5. With cabs it's a $10 trip to go nowhere." As for public transportation: "If I'm going to take the bus to work, I leave at noon. If I catch a hack, I leave at 1:30."

[1] http://www2.citypaper.com/story.asp?id=6264 [2] http://www2.citypaper.com/film/story.asp?id=15396 [3] https://web.archive.org/web/20100108192651/http://www.gsd.ha...

[sliverstorm]

Shared carpooling has always been an option, but there has never been a dominant player, so it's always hard for me to find shares. Natural monopoly and all that.