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Some Thoughts on the Spat Over Metro's Inaguration Ridership Numbers

Posted by WMATAGMOAGH on Sun Jan 22 21:27:18 2017

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Short version is the White House is straight up lying about the ridership stats. Here is the real scoop:

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There has been a lot of digital ink spilled about Metrorail ridership and how it relates to historical inauguration crowd sizes. Here is some data from WMATA (the DC area transit agency) that anyone can find online (you may need to use archive.org to find some of it, Metro's website was redesigned recently and some older press releases are harder to find now).

A few things before I get in to the data itself.

1. It should be noted that Metro has no incentive to report lower than actual ridership totals, so there is no "political" aspect to the reporting.

2. Metro usually releases ridership statistics as the day goes on for days with very heavy or very light ridership, the way in which they reported this data over the past few days did not differ from previous inaugurations or other large scale events.

3. Ridership is counted by the number of "entries" in to the system over the course of a day. In other words, each time someone taps his or her Smartrip (or inserted their farecard in to the faregate in the olden days) to enter the system, that counts as a trip for these statistics. Exit data is collected as you leave the system but those numbers are lower as people sometimes lose their cards during their journey, so Metro uses entries as the metric of choice. Finally, this is a measure of how many trips are being taken, not how many individual riders are using the system. If you take the Metro from Silver Spring to Metro Center in the morning and from Metro Center back to Silver Spring in the evening on a given day, that counts as two trips.

And now, here are the numbers.

I found ridership data for the presidential inaugurations dating back to Bill Clinton's first inauguration in 1993. While i can't find data for the years before that, I imagine the relevance of ridership totals from those years is not all that interesting or significant since only 71 stations were open for the 1993 inauguration and an additional 20 have opened since then, so ridership has increased over time due to regional factors that have nothing to do with the presidential inauguration. I'll even go out on a limb and assume that the lowest ridership total for Inauguration Day in Metro history was and will be January 20, 1977 (Jimmy Carter's inauguration) when the entire system was 7 stations served by a single line (the 7th station opened on January 17, 1977, just three days prior).

Ridership for Inauguration Day, 1993-2017

January 20, 1993 (Bill Clinton): 811,257
January 20, 1997 (Bill Clinton): 454, 918
January 20, 2001 (George W. Bush): 601.839
January 20, 2005 (George W. Bush): 575,069
January 20, 2009 (Barack Obama): 1,120,000
January 21, 2013 (Barack Obama): 797,787
January 20, 2017 (Donald Trump): 570,557

Some notes about these statistics:

1. The first Clinton inauguration ridership total remained the WMATA record until June 9, 2004 when 850,636 riders used the system during the Ronald Reagan funeral.
2. The first Obama inauguration total is a round number because Metro opened the gates to keep crowds moving, an exact total for that date will never be established.

Here is the list of the top 20 weekday ridership days for Metro as of January 2009. Since then, the only other day to have over 1 million riders (or even over 900,000 riders) is yesterday for the Women's March, which saw 1,001,616 riders.

Metrorail’s Top 20 Weekday Ridership Days
Date Ridership Event
1 01-20-09 1,120,000 Obama Inauguration
2 01-19-09 866,681 Obama inaugural events
3 07-11-08 854,638 Baseball/Women of Faith Conference
4 06-09-04 850,636 Reagan State Funeral
5 06-25-08 846,388 Smithsonian Folklife Festival/Baseball
6 07-10-08 844,530 Baseball
7 07-08-08 835,072 Baseball/Basketball
8 07-02-08 834,956 Smithsonian Folklife Festival
9 04-03-07 831,508 Cherry Blossoms/Baseball
10 06-24-08 831,464 Baseball/Basketball
11 06-20-08 829,998 Baseball/Basketball
12 04-24-08 828,973 Baseball/Basketball
13 04-17-08 828,418 Pope Visit/Soccer
14 04-11-08 828,132 Baseball/Cherry Blossoms
15 06-27-08 825,862 Smithsonian Folklife Festival/Baseball
16 06-18-08 823,516 No Event
17 07-01-08 822,931 No Event
18 04-10-06 821,283 Immigrant Rights Rally
19 06-19-08 819,979 No Event
20 06-26-08 819,722 Smithsonian Folklife Festival

I can't find an updated top 20 ridership dates list for after 2009, possibly because since 2009 the daily ridership record hasn't been broken, and Metro tends to only update this list and publicize it when the record is broken. Also, ridership overall has been down in recent years, so I suspect there have been fewer dates making it in to the top 20 list as of late. Perhaps we'll get an updated list from Metro in the coming days in the wake of this week's events.

Finally, for comparison purposes, the average weekday daily ridership for Metrorail as of May 2015 was 712,843, and IIRC it may now be hovering below the 700,000 mark.

In conclusion, Saturday's ridership is the highest Saturday ridership ever recorded and the second highest recorded on any day of the week. By comparison, Friday's ridership ranks ahead of only one other inauguration day (1997) in the period I have data for, though it is certainly comparable to the 2005 inauguration and ranks below the regular weekday average.

Finally, there will never be an "official" count of how many people were on the Mall for any event that took place this week. In fact, since the Million Man March in 1995, the National Park Service has not made any estimated counts for the number of people who attend any event on the Mall, period. You can read about why that is and how estimates are now made by independent, outside groups at http://bigstory.ap.org/…/when-it-comes-inaugural-crowds-doe…, but none of those is official by any means.

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Re: Some Thoughts on the Spat Over Metro's Inaguration Ridership Numbers

Posted by Henry R32 #3730 on Sun Jan 22 22:25:14 2017, in response to Some Thoughts on the Spat Over Metro's Inaguration Ridership Numbers, posted by WMATAGMOAGH on Sun Jan 22 21:27:18 2017.

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Interesting, but makes sense.

One change to account for some of the lower ridership is the lack of late evening service. Ignoring Trump, once upon a time Friday and Saturday nights would be quite busy for Metro. Now people are just carpooling to go clubbing since cutting the night short at 11:30 to catch the last train is lame.

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Re: Some Thoughts on the Spat Over Metro's Inaguration Ridership Numbers

Posted by Sand Box John on Sun Jan 22 22:32:06 2017, in response to Some Thoughts on the Spat Over Metro's Inaguration Ridership Numbers, posted by WMATAGMOAGH on Sun Jan 22 21:27:18 2017.

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Metro history was and will be January 20, 1977 (Jimmy Carter's inauguration) when the entire system was 7 stations served by a single line (the 7th station opened on January 17, 1977, just three days prior).

From WMATA history.

"January 20: Jimmy Carter's Inaugural Committee charters $170,000 worth of Metrobus service and rents rail system for 2.5 hours to move crowds."

During that era WMATA opened 6 AM to 8 PM weekdays except holidays and weekends.

If memory serves that 2 1/2 later closing added around 3,000 trips to the normal daily Metrorail number. I was one of them as I used Metrorail to get to my night job back then.

Did read that e-mail I sent you? Here is the all of them.

John in the sand box of Maryland's eastern shore.

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(1425010)

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Re: Some Thoughts on the Spat Over Metro's Inaguration Ridership Numbers

Posted by GojiMet86 on Sun Jan 22 22:52:34 2017, in response to Some Thoughts on the Spat Over Metro's Inaguration Ridership Numbers, posted by WMATAGMOAGH on Sun Jan 22 21:27:18 2017.

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It's weird to say the White House is straight-out lying, but that will be the new reality.

Of course, that's just an alternative fact...

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(1425015)

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Re: Some Thoughts on the Spat Over Metro's Inaguration Ridership Numbers

Posted by WMATAGMOAGH on Sun Jan 22 23:34:52 2017, in response to Re: Some Thoughts on the Spat Over Metro's Inaguration Ridership Numbers, posted by Sand Box John on Sun Jan 22 22:32:06 2017.

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I've been swamped with email lately, I know that I need to get to yours.

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(1425016)

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Re: Some Thoughts on the Spat Over Metro's Inaguration Ridership Numbers

Posted by Spider-Pig on Sun Jan 22 23:36:51 2017, in response to Re: Some Thoughts on the Spat Over Metro's Inaguration Ridership Numbers, posted by GojiMet86 on Sun Jan 22 22:52:34 2017.

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1458:12:23:40

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(1425019)

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Re: Some Thoughts on the Spat Over Metro's Inaguration Ridership Numbers

Posted by Sand Box John on Mon Jan 23 00:23:40 2017, in response to Re: Some Thoughts on the Spat Over Metro's Inaguration Ridership Numbers, posted by WMATAGMOAGH on Sun Jan 22 23:34:52 2017.

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I've been swamped with email lately, I know that I need to get to yours.

The e-mail had a link to a Silver Spring destination sign that I later discovered has some dimensional errors. The link above has what I consider to be reasonable good reproductions of the real thing.

John in the sand box of Maryland's eastern shore.

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(1425023)

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Re: Some Thoughts on the Spat Over Metro's Inaguration Ridership Numbers

Posted by Jackson Park B Train on Mon Jan 23 01:38:01 2017, in response to Re: Some Thoughts on the Spat Over Metro's Inaguration Ridership Numbers, posted by GojiMet86 on Sun Jan 22 22:52:34 2017.

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Nothing new about that. Nixon and truth had an adversarial relationship. And as to Presidents haranguing the press, look up JFK's tantrums about NYT coverage of Viet Nam. The WH officially cancelled the subscription to the Times over David Halberstam's reporting.

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(1425024)

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Re: Some Thoughts on the Spat Over Metro's Inaguration Ridership Numbers

Posted by Jackson Park B Train on Mon Jan 23 01:57:27 2017, in response to Some Thoughts on the Spat Over Metro's Inaguration Ridership Numbers, posted by WMATAGMOAGH on Sun Jan 22 21:27:18 2017.

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Thank you, Oren. The actual numbers are always worth having. As to the liar-in-chief, the less said the better.
Gotta say, for those of us old enough to have been involved in the civil rights and anti-war demos of yesteryear, the authorities always claimed much smaller numbers than the participants. Funny to have the shoe on the other foot.

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Re: Some Thoughts on the Spat Over Metro's Inaguration Ridership Numbers

Posted by AlM on Mon Jan 23 10:51:28 2017, in response to Some Thoughts on the Spat Over Metro's Inaguration Ridership Numbers, posted by WMATAGMOAGH on Sun Jan 22 21:27:18 2017.

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Thank you for the facts.

I guess we will have to wait for the usual suspects to gather the alternative facts.

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Re: Some Thoughts on the Spat Over Metro's Inaguration Ridership Numbers

Posted by WMATAGMOAGH on Mon Jan 23 10:51:52 2017, in response to Re: Some Thoughts on the Spat Over Metro's Inaguration Ridership Numbers, posted by Henry R32 #3730 on Sun Jan 22 22:25:14 2017.

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Someone with a lot more time on their hands would have to do the analysis to see how the varying system hours impact the ridership totals. That said, my guess is that the evening ridership probably doesn't change a whole lot due to the inauguration, especially as the night goes on. In other words, whether the subway closes at midnight or 3 AM isn't going to change the ridership totals much.

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