Metro officials say they can carry up to 1.6 million people on the system’s trains and buses on Tuesday as crowds come to witness Barack Obama’s swearing-in as president.
But it isn’t clear how many people that really means, since the Metro system counts rides, not people. One person who takes Metrorail into the city for the inauguration, then back home, counts twice. Someone who takes three trips — to downtown, then to an inauguration party, and back home — would count three times.
People vs. ridership, Metro spokeswoman Cathy Asato notes, “We use them interchangeably, but it’s really trips.”
Metro General Manager John Catoe has said the transit system could handle 1 million people on its trains and another 600,000 on its buses on Inauguration Day.
But it seems likely that the hordes of people who take Metro for the inauguration also would use the system to leave. That means the system more likely can handle 800,000 people — half a million on the rails and 300,000 on buses.
It’s not clear how many people will come to Tuesday’s events, although most estimates put the number between 1 million and 2 million. Certainly some people will head into the city by other modes besides Metro, such as walking, biking, charter bus, taxi or even Segway.
But no matter how many people want to ride the transit system, Metro will be limited in how many people it can carry during its 22 hours of service Tuesday.
If the Metrorail system fits 1,000 people per train and can run 20 trains per hour in each direction on each of the three main trunk lines, it could only handle 120,000 riders per hour.
“Those are theoretical maximums; presumably it’s something less than that,” said Peter Benjamin, a Metro board member who used to be the system’s chief financial officer.
If the system ran perfectly and full, he noted, it would take more than eight hours to carry 1 million riders. The bottom line for Metro riders: Expect long waits.
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