It's America's big celebration of democracy, and the peaceful transition of government. But if yesterday is any example for what's to come, folks planning to attend the celebrations at the Mall tomorrow should be prepared for some challenging logistics. There is a link to a WaPo pdf map of the mall at the end of this post.
We went into Old Town Alexandria yesterday, a short trip for us that takes us by the King Street Metro station, which offers a direct trip into DC via the Blue or Yellow lines (they will both be re-routed tomorrow, a standard practice for big Mall events).
In every direction, for six blocks around the station, all of the street parking was taken. Fortunately as residents we know some secret back street locations to park and had no problem, however, I'd expect the parking challenge to be worse tomorrow.
Once you are on the train, from King Street you progress through Crystal and Pentagon City stations - both areas are rich with tourist and business hotels, so already crowded trains will be delayed and only get more crowded.
Finally, at the destination, there will be all the walking and check points - not to be underestimated, the distance from the Lincoln Memorial to the Capitol is 2 miles. So this note is not to discourage attendance, but to let everyone know to be prepared.
A few more random notes. A big news story going around is about the lack of sanitary facilities - they are saying that only about half of the number of port-a-potties for the estimated crowd size will be available. Also, we heard that yesterday there were more police in DC than there are soldiers in Afghanistan.
Here is a link to a pdf on WashingtonPost.com - a map of the Mall.
http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/metro/inaugcentral/maps/parade.pdf
No comments:
Post a Comment