re: #237 bofhell

If you look at my post yesterday, I cited a number of Saturday ridership reports from Metrorail, including two from a year ago. A jump in ridership of about 130k seems to be reflected, which is 65k people (since one person would almost certainly make two trips — one to the rally, one back). Of course, Metrorail is but one way for people to have gotten to the rally, so the number must necessarily be higher than 65k.

There are too many other factors to be certain. Weather, other events in town, school schedules, holidays…the list goes on.

The numbers aren’t at all inconsistent with the Fire Department estimate. They are entirely inconsistent with a crowd estimated in the hundreds of thousands. In fact, given the mess that the inaugural brought to DC with between 1.5 and 1.8 million attendees, it’s a wonder the buses would be able to run at all if such numbers were present. The city was essentially gridlocked inside the Beltway by those numbers.