Creative Carpooling, D.c. Style
By Levi Quinn
Many people sing the praises of carpooling, for many different reasons. Most people agree carpooling is a good thing because it reduces the amount of gasoline and oil consumed, thereby conserving the Earth’s limited resources. By reducing the amount of fossil fuels burned, carpooling also reduces the amount of vehicle exhaust in the air, decreasing the amount of carcinogens we breathe and the rate at which we destroy our ozone layer, reducing greenhouse gases.

All of these things are positives. However, most people tend to respond to how things affect their pocketbook. Most people will not carpool because it is good for the environment; they carpool because it is good for them, saving money.

The situation isn't hopeless. We need to work with human nature and not against it. Let's take a look at the “slugging” phenomenon that takes place in Washington, D.C. The reason "slugging" is such an interesting phenomenon is that no one is actually doing it out of altruistic tendencies or to save the environment.

Here is what happens: You have two groups of people, one driving into the city to work and the other leaving their cars behind. The people without cars stand in lines according to where they want to travel, and the people with cars stop by and ask for passengers traveling near where they are headed. Each car needs to have at least three people in it, and this is because the person with the car is picking up people to be permitted to drive in the HOV lane.

The HOV lane is also called the carpooling lane, and a car full of passengers may use this lane to travel. Since there are fewer people with three or more passengers in the car, this lane moves faster while other lanes become jammed each morning with traffic. That makes carpooling the quickest way to get to work in the morning – quicker, even, than the bus.

If everyone caught on to the wonders of carpooling and legal use of the HOV lane, it would actually slow the lane down as more cars used the lane to travel, but the result would be the other lanes speeding up because the number of cars using them would be reduced. In addition, the pollution in the city would be significantly reduced.

Of course, the point of the matter isn't that people are carpooling to do something good for the world. Without incentives such as the HOV lane and faster travel, people would rather not have other people in their cars. This system works to have people go against their natures

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and carpool, because the system works with those natures by giving people a reward and something everyone wants badly – a quick ride to work and escape from the traffic jam.

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