As commutes worsen, drivers seek solutions

An even more informal method of car sharing is commuting by “slugging.” In this practice, popularized by suburban Washington, D.C., commuters traveling to and from government jobs, especially at The Pentagon, ad hoc groups congregate at parking lots in the morning. Drivers who want to use their car that day, and who want to use the region’s commuter lanes, stop at the slug line and fill their car with riders (called “slugs”) from the front of the line.

The driver gets to drive to and from the city when he wants while using the speedier commuter lanes and the slugging commuters get to go to work for free. In the afternoon, lines form outside the workplace, with a designated destination for each line. This method saves gas, relieves traffic and reduces parking requirements, while providing travelers significant flexibility because there is no set travel time as there is with a car pool. It has the downside of reduced privacy during the commute, but practitioners employ their elevator manners to largely ignore one another.

The question remains: Why use four wheels to move individual workers to their jobs? When commuters need flexible travel times, prefer not to travel with others, want maximum fuel economy, frequently reduced parking charges and a little fun thrown into the mix, two wheels are an increasingly popular solutions.

While recreational riders have mostly boosted Harley-Davidson’s sales, some of them have discovered that their motorcycle is a fun alternative for travel to work, one which provides access to restricted commuters lanes. And scooter sales have increased tenfold in the last decade, according to the Motorcycle Industry Council, with sales reaching 131,000 units in 2006.

“We see people become more interested in using a motorcycle for commuting whenever there is a spike in gas prices,” remarked Lance Oliver, a spokesman for the American Motorcyclist Association. 

While consumers might be reluctant to spend the money to buy a new hybrid-electric car that gets superior gas mileage, “It is not hard to find a motorcycle that will get 50 miles per gallon,” he said. “Motorcycles are an inexpensive alternative that will get you good gas mileage.”

Of course, there are safety and weather concerns, but these are mitigated by rider training groups such as the Motorcycle Safety Foundation and protective riding suits such as the RiderWearHouse Aerostich — a suit that lets commuters wear their work clothes underneath a quick-zip, on-and-off weatherproof outer suit.

“We can spend a fraction of what it costs to buy a new car, get double the gas mileage and arrive at work having fun,” Oliver said. How many other commuters can say the same?

Still further down the transportation food chain is human-powered travel, such as bicycles, skates and walking, which can all play a part in the new fractured commuting schemes that use more than one transportation method for each day’s commute.

These solutions work especially well when shared, so long as there is strict tracking of bikes and users, said MIT’s Chin.

“You need to have accountability for bike-sharing to work,” he explained. For example, a new system in Paris that employs a radio frequency identification tags and global positioning tracking to keep an eye on the bikes is working well, Chin said. 

The Netherlands learned this the hard way with a failed bike-sharing system that had no accountability. 

“There were a bunch of punks who threw the bikes into the river,” Chin chuckled. “Suburban kids went drinking [in the city] and rode the bikes out to the suburbs and abandoned them.”

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