Slug lines revamped Horner Road lot
By CHRIS NEWMAN
News & Messenger
Tuesday, April 20, 2004
Ridesharing "slugs" are strongly independent, but to fix the morning traffic jam at the Horner Road commuter lot, they needed help from the government.
The 2,200-space lot, the largest in Northern Virginia, has become clogged on its back side in the mornings. The line of drivers picking up slugs has grown so much that it blocks bus lanes and traffic on Telegraph Road.
On Wednesday the fix is on: the slug line will be split into two lines to shorten the queue, just as was done for slug lines in the front of the lot.
Drivers heading to 18th Street in Washington, D.C., will continue to line up at the current line, but drivers heading to 14th Street/L'Enfant/Navy Yard will line up near the bicycle lockers and queue around the perimeter of the parking lot.
The government entered the picture after complaints about the line backing up onto Telegraph Road and blocking bus lanes. Prince William county police on March 12 had to break up the line to free up traffic.
Police also stepped up ticketing of illegal parkers to ensure safe ingress and egress from the lot -- slugs have also gotten more imaginative with parking now that the lot, two years after a $10 million expansion, regularly reaches capacity.
"We hope the ridesharers are a little more conscious of what is going on so they are not blocking the lanes," said Prince William Police Capt. Tim Rudy, who along with county engineer Steve Stevens met with slug leader David LeBlanc of Woodbridge last month to figure out how to tackle the problem.
LeBlanc owns and operates the Web site http://www.slug-lines.com. He asked for proposals and then got feedback: 3,000 people viewed the options and gave more than 100 comments.
The Virginia Department of Transportation drew up plans to reroute the single line by eliminating several parking spaces. But that would not have accomplished as much as the line split, VDOT engineers said.
VDOT delivered two variable message boards on Friday to get the word out, and slugs have distributed flyers printed off from the slug Web site.
If the fix works, Stevens said VDOT could provide permanent signing and striping markings for the lines.
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