D.C. Metro Ridership Set Saturday Record On Day Of Rally For Sanity And/Or Fear

Yes, this will just contribute to the never ending “my crowd is bigger than your crowd” debate, but the ridership figures from the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority hit a record for a Saturday on the day of the Rally To Restore Sanity And/Or Fear:

Metro set a new record for highest Saturday Metrorail ridership on Saturday, October 30. Officials estimate 825,437 Metrorail trips were taken, with many people traveling to the National Mall for the “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear.”

In anticipation of the crowds, Metro added extra trains, and additional Metro personnel were on hand to assist customers at the fare gates and with purchasing fare cards. But because of the record setting ridership, Metro experienced unprecedented crowds throughout the day with long lines at many end-of-the-line stations early in the day as customers waited to enter the system.

Average Saturday Metrorail ridership is typically about 350,000. Yesterday’s record ridership surpassed the 1991 Desert Storm rally, which was held on June 8, 1991 and held the top spot for 19 years.

This number exceeds by more than 300,000 the 510,000 trips recorded on August 28th, the day of Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor rally.

This would seem to confirm that Saturday’s crowd was in fact larger than the Beck rally, to the extent that matters.

FILED UNDER: US Politics, , ,
Doug Mataconis
About Doug Mataconis
Doug Mataconis held a B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He joined the staff of OTB in May 2010 and contributed a staggering 16,483 posts before his retirement in January 2020. He passed far too young in July 2021.

Comments

  1. John Personna says:

    Funny how the “don’t count ’em” campaign started before the counts came in, let alone the stories of those who attended, about why they attended.

  2. Mithras says:

    To be fair, liberals ride public transport, conservatives try to park their SUV as close to wherever it is they’re going and walk as little as possible. So many more people could have attended the Beck rally and it just wouldn’t show up in the metro numbers.

  3. Nikki says:

    “…conservatives try to park their SUV as close to wherever it is they’re going and walk as little as possible…”

    …which I would give you as a reasonable justification except that there is nowhere to park in DC near the national mall, ESPECIALLY during mall events/rallies. One has only two choices, take public transportation or stay away.

  4. john personna says:

    I think conservatives take their SUVs down for a supersize meal at the drive-through, and then back to the couch to watch it all on tv …