Solution To Old Hechinger's Filling Up

The Old Hechinger's lot has become kind of a nightmare recently. It can be very hard to find a space in the morning and if you dare park along that far wall you WILL be ticketed (I just got done paying the last one I got.) The lot is filling up quick and the result is lots of cars lining up looking for slugs but no slugs because they can't find a place to park. This undermines the whole reason why we slug. Fortunately I think there is a simple solution in the case of the hechinger lot.[:)]

If you go to find a space after around 8:20 at the O.H. lot in the morning and if you don't see any, just get back on 123 and go to that grossly under-used lot that's right off 123 on the northbound side of 95. It's literally 200 yards from O.H. and there are TONS of spaces waiting to be filled! It's a commuter lot that we as taxpayers pay for- let's make it the 'overflow' lot for O.H.! I think that VDOT should post signs that address this option at O.H. so that slugging can continue despite the limited size of that lot.

Pflanigan, the 123 lot is significantly more than 200 yards from Old Hechingers. I have walked from the 123 lot to Old Hechingers once. I either got on the wrong bus coming out of DC one afternoon or got mixed up which lot I had parked in that morning (I do that to myself at least once a year). You have to walk up the ramp that descends into the lot. You are in the street so will have to deal motor traffic coming into the lot. Then you walk along the shoulder or sidewalk on Gordon/123. But the diciest thing is sprinting across Gordon/123 to get to the other side of the street. The motorists will do their very best to kill you dead (smirk), and I don't think you have any crosswalk until the marina. You're walking maybe a quarter mile overall. It is not insignificant, timewise nor otherwise.

I would love to park over there and slug to either 14th or 18th street. But no drivers want pick up or drop off there to really get it started.

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Originally posted by Admin

Even with leaving the 14th/18th/L'Enfant at Potomac Mills we (slugging community) may need to expand to the 123 lot. As you said, it is very very close.

So, do you 14th/18th/L'Enfant slugs support that? We can set a date and I can help promote it, but only if slugs want to do this.

Let me know how I can help!

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Checkers,

You're "spot on" with the history of sluggin' at Springfield.

Once upon a time, there was a bus stop across Old Keene Mill Rd from the old Bob's Big Boy Restaurant, the 1970's oil crisis hit, Virginia opened the bus-only express lanes to 4-person carpools during rush hours, drivers wanting to use these lanes to save commuting time stopped at the bus stop and offered rides to the bus commuters to meet the 4-in-a-car carpool requirement --- and sluggin' was borne!

The offering of morning rides concept spread to other bus stops further west in Springfield and Burke. Commuter lots (like Rolling Valley) were built with bus service -- and sluggin' expanded to them.

As the I-95 HOV lanes extended southward, more commuter lots with bus service were established; in the early 90s the 4-person requirement was changed to 3-people-in a car; and somewhere in the history, certain vehicles (motorcycles, law enforcement, taxis with a fare, some SOV clean fuel vehicles, etc.) were given exemptions to use the HOV lanes during rush hours with less than 3 aboard -- and we now have sluggin' as it exists today. [:)]

(As a side note - There's a similar history about drivers originally getting riders from the afternoon bus lines at the Pentagon and downtown for the evening rides home. Later, there were increases in the number and some formal designations of afternoon slug lines, and there have also been some relocations of some of these slug lines.)

Not a perfect system -- but pretty dang efficient.

I-95 High-Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes (where 3-person carpools are supposed to ride at no charge) will be the next chapter in this history. Stay tuned.

A disclaimer: That's the history as passed to me by other Burke/Springfield commuters who have been commuting as long as, or longer than, I have (since early 1986). If it's not accurate, please post any corrections.

(By the way, what happened to this Message Board yesterday? It wouldn't open for most of the day and displayed an error message.)

Yes, the message board was down almost all day yesterday as a result of an "upgrade" to a newer server. It appears that all the kinks have been worked out now!

Sorry for the inconvenience!