The people who run our regional public transportation agencies are more accustomed to dodging brickbats than catching bouquets. When things go smoothly, they're just doing their jobs. When they don't, they're a bunch of incompetent idiots.
But you have to admit: They did a remarkable job Tuesday in getting an enormous crowd to and from the presidential inauguration.
Topping the list of all-star performers is the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Administration and its general manager, John Catoe. WMATA carried more than 1.1 million riders on its Metro system that day. That total is about 250,000 more riders than it had ever carried - with the previous record being set the day before. (One Metro rider ended up on the Red Line tracks on Inauguration Day, but an alert transit officer got her to safety.)
Metro got people there and back safely by showing its customers the tough love they needed - deftly closing stations when they got too crowded and reopening them as the lines eased. The effect was to spread out the crowds by encouraging those who could to walk to more distant stations.
Certainly many riders experienced the discomfort of long lines and being smooshed together with their fellow human creatures, but if any were surprised by those conditions, they must have been on another planet since Election Day. Metro officials did a laudable job of laying out exactly what passengers could expect. Then it delivered. Particularly impressive was its maintenance team's quick response when riders - most likely subway virgins from out of town - disabled trains by trying to hold Metro doors.
WMATA also deserves kudos for beefing up the runs of the B30 bus between BWI Marshall Airport and the Greenbelt Metro station for the inaugural weekend. That bus run is the hidden jewel among the transit links between Baltimore and Washington. It would be a wonderful byproduct of the inaugural if that experience created demand for more frequent service on that route every day.
The District of Columbia and Virginia governments can take credit for their responsible decision to close the Potomac bridges to passenger vehicles - even in the face of whiners who considered it a form of discrimination. (Damn those Yankees for putting a river between the District and Old Virginny.)
As it turned out, Virginians apparently flocked to mass transit or enjoyed a leisurely walk across the stream. Traffic nightmare averted.
