WPost Blog: CBS' Estimate of 215,000 at Stewart/Colbert Rally is Wildly Low

[RamboLiberal]

Just at it did with the Beck/Palin rally, CBS News commissioned an independent, non-political firm (AirPhotosLive.com) to estimate attendance at the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert Sanity/Fear event yesterday. The result? 215,000 yesterday for fun and sanity vs. 87,000 for Beck/Palin's bizarre version of "honor." Good news, right? Well, yeah, except that the AirPhotosLive.com estimate of yesterday's rally is almost certain to be wildly low. How so? Three reasons.

1. For anyone who tried taking Metro yesterday, you know that it was completely FUBAR. For instance, if you lived any further east than Vienna, Virginia, you had close to zero chance of getting on an Orange Line train in the hours leading up to the rally. I personally tried to do this around 10-11 am at Virginia Square Metro in Arlington, and it was "nothing doing."

How many of the tens of thousands of people who wanted to take Metro but were not able to do so ever got to the rally is beyond me, but my guess is that the vast majority simply gave up after realizing it was hopeless. Presumably, the same thing was happening on other lines, as the Metro person I spoke to at Virginia Square told me that Metro hadn't put any additional trains on, based on an apparently complete breakdown of communications between rally organizers and Metro, but simply operated on normal, very slow (trains at 12-13 minute intervals) weekend schedule. It was a complete debacle, and I don't remember hearing anything of this sort happening at the Palin/Beck rally. WTF? Anyway, add tens of thousands of people who tried to go the rally yesterday but were stymied by Metro.
2. Along with tens of thousands of other people, probably a lot more, I finally made it to the outskirts of the rally, but not to the rally itself. The photo above was taken as I walked with two friends (Eric of Blue Virginia and his wife, Marna) from the Chinatown area towards the rally. Note that we were surrounded by thousands of people, and also note that this was occurring on pretty much ever street heading south from the District towards the rally. At one point, I looked up one of the streets, probably around 7th or 8th NW, and saw swarms of people as far as the eye could see trying (but not succeeding) to make their way towards the rally. None of these people, almost certainly tens of thousands (if not more) if you count all the people on all the streets, are not even in the AirPhotosLive.com photo, which they used to make their estimate.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/politics/blog-network/2010/10/cbs_estimate_of_215000_at_stew.html?hpid=topnews

The Rally to Create Insanity on Metro: Two reasons why the trains were so hairy on Saturday

The first reason -- aside from the fact that 825,437 trips were taken -- was a choice made by Metro. For better or worse, they decided to stick to their track-work schedule, even though event organizers told them to expect ridership numbers similar to the Glenn Beck rally -- an event this one vastly surpassed.

When you have to single-track along stretches of several Metro lines -- as along the Red, Green, and Yellow this weekend -- ideally you won't do it on a day when perhaps 200,000 people are converging on the National Mall from all corners. But Metro as a general policy doesn't monkey with their repair schedule once they've laid it out. Spokesman Steven Taubenkibel doesn't recall whether the Rally to Restore Sanity had been announced before Metro firmed up its calendar, but he says the agency stands by its decision to continue the work through the rally.

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Another reason for the overcrowding was a choice made by rally organizers with Comedy Central. They declined to fork out money for extra rail service. If they had, then some riders wouldn't have been prevented from boarding trains at stations like Columbia Heights and Braddock Road, where would-be passengers had to watch one overstuffed car after another pass them by.

A lot of organizers shell out the dough to make sure trains run with high frequency before and after events. An early opening typically runs about $29,000, and the rates for extra trains depend on how long you want them to run and between which stations. The folks behind the U.S. Army Ten-Miler and the Marine Corps Marathon decided to do it. Though Metro was in talks with Stewart's people about it, they ultimately decided to take a pass, perhaps because they didn't anticipate many more people than at Beck's rally. (Beck's people didn't pay for extra service, either.)

http://www.tbd.com/blogs/tbd-on-foot/2010/11/two-reasons-why-metro-was-so-hairy-on-saturday-3992.html

[gkhouston]

1. I'm wondering if Mythbusters is going to do a segment about estimating crowd sizes.

I wonder what they come up with. Given their usual thoroughness, I wouldn't be surprised if they do more than make estimates based on their "wave" experiment.

[MiniMe]

3. email them at Discovery.com

[fascisthunter]

2. there ya go... I knew they tried to marginalize the event

the photos prove the media to be biased.

[Bitwit1234]

4. Why is it Metro didn't put on extra trains

didn't they during Beck's rally.

[MattyGroves]

6. Nope - neither Beck or Stewart paid extra and therefore didn't get anything extra

You want extra trains you pay for extra trains.

Metro's budget problems are such that running extra trains for the sake of a rally without getting extra money for it would have been irresponsible.

[krkaufman]

8. And I think the organizers (Stewart/Colbert) were surprised by the turnout.

Sounds like they expected less than 150,000.

[MattyGroves]

5. Poor planning on the event organizers part if they didn't research the metro schedule

Simply, you want extra trains you pay for the extra trains. There's no secret about that. Perhaps if the organizers had forked out the money there wouldn't have been such a problem.

[krkaufman]

7. Yeah, it sounds like many more than 215,000 *tried* to attend the rally

The congestion makes me wonder how the hell the town could ever handle a "million person march."