How'd they do?

I'm not sure what persons or committees were responsible for this and that aspects of the inaugural festivities, so this post will rely heavily on imprecise words like "they", but, unlike Ezra Klein, I don't think it's all that hard to judge whether it was well or poorly planned.

Even correcting for the fact that 2 (or 4 or whatever) million people is probably too many for a city of D.C.'s resources to handle smoothly under any circumstances, certainly "they" left many obvious things undone. I'm not sure what Fenty et al. could have done about the metro chaos, aside from, perhaps, manning each car with a staffer or volunteer whose job would have been to make sure the trains were as full as possible. D.C.'s Metro culture isn't all that evolved to begin with, and with millions of tourists in town, the space on those cars was nowhere near maximized. People huddled in packs by the doors instead of filling into the center and, time and again, a half- or quarter-empty train would close up and move on, leaving hundreds of passengers to wait for the next one, which was, of course, just as crowded. Solving this problem might've eliminated the need to close down crucial stations like Federal Center at a time when hundreds of thousands of people were following the instructions on their tickets telling them to go there.

Aside: Ultimately, I think the event underscores one of the advantages of a New York style flat fare system. When you pay a flat fare to use the subway, you only need to use your fare card on your way in. Imagine how much smoother the metro would've run if people could've just left the train station upon reaching their destination, without having to fumble with fare cards. But because fares vary here, the gates are outfitted to require fare cards on both ends. Presumably, though, the exits could be outfitted with LEDs so that they'd open automatically for people on their way out.

When I arrived at the entrance for silver-ticket holders, there was a "line" but it wasn't a line. There were no chains demarcating the "line". When people arrived late, they often walked directly to the front of "the line" creating huge problems for overwhelmed guards, who let packs of people at a time into the screening area, many of whom hadn't waited, some of whom, I'm sure, had no tickets at all. Nobody really checked my ticket. And, when I reached screening, my pat down (such as it was) would've allowed me to sneak in perhaps two or three sniper rifles if I'd so desired.

Once in, I headed for the front-most part of the silver zone near third street. Within about 30 minutes, a horde of people had trampled the barrier, and flooded into an area on the Capitol side of the small reflecting pool, which was, I think, supposed to be off limits to spectators. The police officers looked bemused, but the whole thing seemed extremely dangerous to me.

When the event ended, crowd control officers near the south side of the Capitol directed people to move South and West. Assuming it was open, I tried to leave via Federal Center, but by the time I reached the corner of 3rd and D, SW, it was clear I'd have to walk home. That required heading west to at least 17th street. On Independence, though, I found myself trapped in a tight pack of several hundred people, each headed in different directions. Normally, congestion like that resolves itself, but not this time. Police officers told people walking east to turn around and walk west, and vice versa. On the west-bound side of the street, they allowed an Army Band bus to inch along, pushing passengers on its way. On the east bound side, they allowed an ambulance to do the same, in the opposite direction. This, in effect, squeezed people even more tightly together. Some of them began to panic. Others became angry. It could have been a horrible and bloody scene. Finally a police officer standing on a metro bus told everybody to turn east, which quickly cleared things up, but I remain surprised that nobody was trampled or injured or worse.

This, of course, didn't need to happen. There was no reason we were forced to walk west after leaving the mall, when we could have walked east to the Capitol South or Eastern Market metro stations. The exits didn't need to be gateways. They could, for instance, have been pathways, guiding exiting spectators a half-mile or so towards neighborhoods that weren't cluster fucked. Instead, the police guided people like me into cluster fucks and had no idea how to guide us out of them.

I ultimately wasn't able to head north until 21st street, but as I crossed the mall, I noticed scores of people walking from one side of it to the other across a frozen pond. A helpless cop tried to stop them, but they were undeterred, and, to this hour, I don't know if, at some point, the ice gave way and people fell into the freezing, trash-filled water.

I'm sure there's more. Other people certainly have crazier stories. But it's pretty clear to me that "they", whoever "they" are, dropped the ball at a number of crucial choke points.