Hacker News Reader

Comment by cwilson | Hacker News Reader

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...

View on HN

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

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

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

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

That might be it actually.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 :) )

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

Neat idea, how is that enforced?

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.

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com