The "Worst part of your commute?" thread got me thinking about DC area slugs. For those of you that don't know about "slugs", these are people that hitch rides to and from work in cars that need additional passengers to ride in the HOV lanes. It's a really great system. It's an informal situation where drivers pick up passengers at commuter lots so they can drive in the HOV lanes into DC. In the evening, there are designated slug lines all around town where cars pick up passengers for the ride home.

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

Where I work, the slugs walk down the street holding signs where they need to get dropped off. Cars pull over and pick them up. My heartburn is that the cars pull over in the bike lane to pick up slugs. This forces me to stop or pull into city traffic to get around them. It wouldn't be so bad if the drivers seemed aware of my presence in the bike lane, but they get fixated on the slug holding the sign. I've been cut off many times. It's almost like I'm invisible.

End rant. DC slugging is really a cool phenomenon that grew out of the nightmare traffic situation. I just wish that drivers paid more attention.

I'm glad I only have to contend with the smaller squishy kind of slug. This time of year they can be thick enough on some roadways to cause a cyclist to slide out.

that is a neat system, and heck, carpooling is carpooling.

So for what it's worth, just remind yourself that you're always practically invisible, and just continue to stay on your toes.

Well, the slugs shouldn't be holding their signs along the road next to the bike lane. I really blame them more than the cars.

Well, you know where they are, so expect to ride around them. They're just painted bike lanes, not concrete-and-barbed-wire troughs.

It's probably no worse than trying to drive to an airport terminal to pick up or drop off some friends, hoping to get lucky and use a spot that isn't three lanes away from the curb, then hoping to get back out onto the roadway without being scraped by a cab.

The other options, then, are to stand out in the driving lane, or to use a different street that doesn't have a bike lane. Neither of those are very good, though.

Perhaps they should designate a "Slug Zone"? They could put is somewhere that would make it possible for everybody to share the area, make is similar to a bus stop so you know you are going to have to watch for cars coming and going.

BTW I will drive an hour out of my way to avoid DC traffic!

Aaron

Yeah, but where I work, there are no slugs anywhere to be found. Find a different job.

There are slug zones here n' there. One that I remember is by the Pentagon; you need to go near the bus stops, but if you're on the way out of the lot, it's not much of a detour to get to the slugs.

I remember seeing some discussion that there are no "planned" slug pick up zones in DC so where it happens can cause problems (like you described.) IFRC the city does not want to make the practice official so they are going to ignore the problem or ticket motorist to stop the problem. Which seems crazy for a system that a lot of people benefit from.

There is a website, perhaps suggesting a non-bike laned pick up zone to the website or message board would lead to the zone being moved.