Origination of the Term "Slugging"

There's not much written about slugging. Most of the information comes from the website www.slug-lines.com started by David LeBlanc who also wrote a book called "Slugging: The Commuting Alternative for Washington D.C." published in 1999. The website is very informative for slugs and gives news updates in case there are any changes made to the lots, etc.

According to his information, slugging actually started around 35 years ago after the HOV lanes were opened. It began with the HOV lanes and drivers who didn't have the required total 3 passengers to take the HOV lanes. They would drive by bus stops and offer rides to people in order to meet the requirement. Eventually some people decided to take the free ride even though it was being offered by a stranger, either due to long waits for the bus or perhaps the weather conditions influenced them. Word spread and eventually that's how slugging came about. Slugging is very much a word-of-mouth system and the origins are a bit vague being that there's no real government documentation regarding the beginning of slugging.

The origination of the term "slugging" is given on the website run by LeBlanc, and was apparently coined by bus drivers who were at first confused by the people standing in line at the bus stop who never actually took the bus. Since the riders were originally picked up from bus stops, and word began to spread that people could get free rides into DC, or mostly the Pentagon at that time, by waiting there, that's where the lines began. The bus drivers would pass by and stop because they saw people waiting, and the slugs would wave them away. The bus drivers eventually began to recognize who was a "real" bus rider and who wasn't and started to call them "slugs" because that was the term for fake bus tokens.

More to come on the history of slugging, but the origination of the term is one of the most frequently asked questions I get about slugging.