In What Does Free Really Cost, I discussed the problems of free parking. A few weeks ago, in Should Transit Be Free?,  Mark Brown, who has been documenting his car-free lifestyle at Car-Free Baltimore, discusses the many advocates of free transit, and summarizes their arguments:

The fare free transit arguments are:

    * Reduction in operating costs (fare collectors, payment system terminals would be abolished)
    * Increased ridership
    * Broader demographic groups would ride because of convenience and low barriers to entry
    * The environmental, social and health benefits (positive externalities) of each new transit rider would more than compensate for lost fare box revenue
    * More political power/representation due to massive increases in ridership

We tend to treat highways as public goods and transit as a private commodity. Closing highways because there’s no money in the budget to maintain them is unheard of. Cutting transit service is done all the time – just look at Charlotte and Atlanta lately.

Free stuff always sounds good on the receiving end, but I find these to be better arguments against free roads than for free transit. Free roads encouraged sprawl, and free transit might encourage other unsustainable behavior, or crime. As with parking, I suppose I have a Tragedy of the Commons mentality about providing a free service that requires that much energy and maintenance.

Some transit already seems free. Miller-McCune put Slugging — The People’s Transit online today.

“I don’t care where we go,” yells the driver. “I just need two people!”

And off the three go toward the highway — and the suburbs — complete strangers, with not the least concern for personal safety, trying to shave 20 or 30 minutes, maybe more, off their afternoon trip home. “People are cooperating … to commute?” says Marc Oliphant, underscoring the novelty of what is going on here. “It’s like the opposite of road rage!”

Oliphant has brought a dozen local and federal transportation officials to the sidewalk here to gawk at the commuters. No one would believe this sight unseen: People here have created their own transit system using their private cars. On 13 other corners, in Arlington and the District of Columbia, more strangers — Oliphant estimates about 10,000 of them every day — are doing the same thing: “slugging.” ...

“To me,” marvels Oliphant, a facilities planner with the Navy, “it’s an illustration of the ideal for government.”

He’s drawn to slugging as a creative vision that would begin to ease the eternal mess of urban gridlock. Society always reaches first for the infrastructure fix — the costly highway expansion, the new route for the metro rail. But what if government could just nudge more people to do what they’ve done here, creating their own commuting cure within the existing system? Federal Highway Administration studies suggest that free-flowing traffic can be restored on a clogged highway simply by removing 10 percent of its cars.

To get more drivers into a self-sustaining casual carpool, though, officials would have to confront slugging’s built-in complication. They’d have to figure out how to stimulate slugging elsewhere without spoiling its defining feature: Government is not involved, or at least it looks not to be.

But of course government is involved by defining and patrolling HOV lanes. Without the incentive of saving time, people would rather drive alone. I looked up Slug-Lines.com last night:

The system of slugging is quite simple. A car needing additional passengers to meet the required 3- person high occupancy vehicle (HOV) minimum pulls up to one of the known slug lines. The driver usually positions the car so that the slugs are on the passenger side. The driver either displays a sign with the destination or simply lowers the passenger window, to call out the destination, such as "Pentagon," "L’Enfant Plaza," or "14th & New York." The slugs first in line for that particular destination then hop into the car, normally confirming the destination, and off they go.

No money is exchanged because of the mutual benefit: the car driver needs riders just as much as the slugs need a ride. Each party needs the other in order to survive. Normally, there is no conversation unless initiated by the driver; usually the only words exchanged are "Thank you" as the driver drops off the slugs at the destination. ...

It’s hard to believe that slugging has been around in the Northern Virginia and Washington, DC, area for about 35 years! That’s right; slugging debuted in around the 1975 timeframe, shortly after the HOV lanes were opened to carpools and vanpools.

There are a very few similar self-organized systems, such one in the SF Bay area. Why slugging?

When slugging was in its infancy, commuters stood at the bus stops, waiting for a driver to pick them up. Bus drivers, thinking these people were waiting for the bus would stop to pick up the passengers only to be waved off, frustrating many of the drivers. As this event became more and more frequent, bus drivers began recognizing the real bus riders from the fakes. Because the people weren’t really waiting for the bus, drivers began to simply call them "slugs." This definition seems to make sense because these people weren’t real bus riders or even real car poolers in the usual sense of the word. They were, just as the name implies, counterfeit riders or slugs. Hence, the term was born.

What are the drivers called? Body Snatchers, of course.

I'm a bit surprised, but not completely. Back in the late 70s, during a transit strike, my roommate in Alexandria VA used to hold up a sign for downtown DC, and generally had no trouble finding rides. When times get tough, people will adapt.