By Martin Davis
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
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With federal workers ordered back to the office by the Trump Administration, slugging is up sharply over 2023 and 2024. That’s according to the 2025 Park & Ride Lot Slug Count released last week by the George Washington Regional Commission. The count has been performed annually since 2022.
Slugging occurs at designated Park & Ride lots where would-be passengers (slugs) line up to accept rides from drivers looking to make the drive north with three people in the car. Cars with three passengers can use the HOV lanes for free.
Of the three lots that the 2025 study provided data for — Route 17, Route 630, and Route 610 — the Staffordboro Park & Ride Lot on Route 610 was far and away the busiest.
Between 4:00 AM when GWRC began counting riders and cars and roughly 8:40 AM when counts ended, 639 riders and 342 cars were tabulated.
The total number of riders recorded and the total number of cars picking riders up was up sharply from the previous highs recorded in 2023 — 46.6% more riders and 55.4% more cars. (The 2024 count coincided with the start of school, which likely accounted for lower-than-expected numbers.)
Route 17 was the next busiest, with 119 riders and 39 drivers.
Comparisons with previous years are not particularly helpful. In 2024 — when the count overlapped with the start of school — just four riders and four cars were observed.
Data for 2023 and 2022 at Route 17 were not provided.
Pre-Pandemic Picture Not Clear
While slugging counts by GWRC have been ongoing since 2022, the practice of slugging has a much longer history in the region. The practice dates back to the 1970s, and prior to the pandemic slugging was robust in both Spotsylvania and Stafford.
How robust, however, is impossible to quantify. A story in SmartGrowth America from 2011 explains why:
No one regulates or manages slugging; it’s a grassroots community of commuters who create carpools on the fly. A few other cities around the country have tried it to varying degrees, but it’s uniquely successful in the DC metro area. No one has ever conducted a formal survey or tally, but in 2007 the Virginia DOT pegged the number of daily sluggers at approximately 10,000 commuters.
There’s additional evidence of how robust slugging was a decade ago. Though formal counts didn’t exist prior to 2022, in 2015 upgrades to lots used by slugs greatly expanded capacity at Route 3 and Gordon Road in Spotsylvania (500 parking spots added raising capacity to more than 1,000) and Route 610 in Stafford (1,000 parking spots added, effectively doubling that lot’s capacity).
While numbers are certainly up in 2025, it’s likely that slugging has a long way to go before returning to pre-pandemic levels. Just as is the case with VRE ridership.
More News of Commuting Growth
The recently released GWRC Fiscal Year 2025 Annual Report offers additional insights into the ways commuters are looking to find their way back to the office.
The GWRC operates the GWRideConnect program, which works with commuters to find alternative ways to get to work. Among the offerings are “ride-matching services, promote various transit options, and support carpools with technical assistance.”
According to the report, GWRideConnect assisted “1,768 local residents in FY25, which is a 23.71% increase over FY24.”
Van pools are also on the rise, as evidenced by the growth in the AdVANtage Vanpool Self-Insurance Program. According to the report, “This program extends limited liability insurance coverage to privately operated vanpools registered within the Commonwealth of Virginia. The program experienced over a 17% growth rate in membership dues over the last fiscal year.”
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