The D.C. area’s Metro system weathered Fourth of July storms and schedule changes, experiencing record-breaking ridership for the holiday as America celebrated its semiquincentennial.
Metro General Manager and CEO Randy Clarke more than 866,000 people rode either Metrobus or rail Saturday into Sunday morning, with more than 120,000 trips coming after midnight.
How WMATA calculated those numbers was not immediately clear: Metro’s commuter rail system did not charge fares Saturday as spectators from across the country streamed into D.C. for America’s 250th birthday celebration.
Fare gates at the system’s 98 stations were open into the wee hours of Sunday morning as visitors moved through and out of the District from the National Mall.
In D.C., the celebration meant a Great American State Fair on the National Mall and an attempt to set the record for the largest fireworks display of all time, with a speech from President Donald Trump sandwiched in between.
But the president’s address was delayed more than an hour when Downtown D.C. got hit by a thunderstorm packing heavy rain, high winds, thunder and lightning.
Timing was just one of several challenges that met the Metro system during the day: In the morning, masked men, wearing the uniform of a well-known white-supremacist group and chanting anti-immigrant slogans, rode Orange and Silver line trains into D.C. to march through the city’s streets before gathering at Union Station later in the day and riding to New Carrollton, Maryland.
Then, around noon, a section of the Green and Yellow lines buckled and warped in the blazing heat just beyond College Park station. The mangled track caused a train car to derail. WMATA began running shuttle buses from Hyattsville Crossing station through parts of Prince George’s County.
Later in the day and into the night, Metro stations also served as refuge to visitors caught in passing storms.
The Secret Service and D.C. police also directed the thousands gathered on the Mall to seek shelter in nearby buildings, including the Department of Agriculture, Department of Labor and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History.
Initially, Metro rail had simply reupped its annual Fourth of July commitment, including regular Saturday service until 5 p.m., extra trains in the evening hours and service until the usual weekend closing time of 2 a.m.
But Clarke said Saturday night that service would continue for as long as it would take to get people home.
Â鶹¹ÙÍø has reached out to WMATA for comment.
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