The numbers are still increasing, but it looks like WMATA will almost certainly finish up above 1,000,000 Metrorail riders today (it’s at 973,000 as of 7pm, with 7 hours of service to go), breaking yesterday’s record of almost 867,000, which was the previous record day of all time.
With the exception of the Reagan State Funeral, the “Si, se puede!” immigrant rights rally in 2006, and one record-setting day in 2007, all of the top 20 ridership days have been set in the last 10 months.
It’s going to be very hard to get as many people interested in riding transit as today, but it’s great to be able to move everyone without clogging the roads. Can you imagine trying to get a million people around town without a mass transit system like Metrorail?
So Congratulations, WMATA, on your new record.
2 comments:
I'm kinda bummed they don't have a true number for Tuesday. But I'm sure they learned a LOT for the next million rider day!
Reports were that in order to keep crowds under control the station managers were letting people out of the gates without scanning, so there is really no way to tell precisely how many rode.
On the bright side, even though the faregates didn't deduct those last fares from people, a lot of them left town with the money still on their cards, and probably won't be back to spend it on transit anytime soon.
I don't know what WMATA's rules are for recapturing unused fares but maybe a couple of years down the road that unspent fare revenue can be used to plug a budget hole.
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