Is anyone planning to attend the D.C. rally on October 30th?

[NM posts]

Sorry to hear you couldn't make it, SFspiderman! I'm glad the buses went to Union Station...avoided the metro altogether.

Lots of people there in their 60s and 70s too.

I think there were nine buses that left from the Triangle.

[SFspiderman]

Originally Posted by LoopDeLoop

that's disappointing! which metro station did you drive to in order to ride in & what time did you arrive?

West Falls Church. We were running a bit late (two-year-old in tow) and got there at ~10:15. Got our tickets around 11:45 and then stood on the platform for an hour as we saw about four jam-packed trains heading in and an equal number heading out to Vienna pass by. No room for anyone to get on.

They brought in an empty train at one point to head it back out to Vienna, but we couldn't get over to the other platform fast enough, and it was getting late anyway...not sure we would even have made it "on-time" if we'd gotten on that one.

[darman1484]

Originally Posted by SFspiderman

West Falls Church. We were running a bit late (two-year-old in tow) and got there at ~10:15. Got our tickets around 11:45 and then stood on the platform for an hour as we saw about four jam-packed trains heading in and an equal number heading out to Vienna pass by. No room for anyone to get on.

They brought in an empty train at one point to head it back out to Vienna, but we couldn't get over to the other platform fast enough, and it was getting late anyway...not sure we would even have made it "on-time" if we'd gotten on that one.

I got on in Vienna about 10:15am. Since this was the first stop, the metro was empty when we got on, but was nearly full to capacity when it rolled away. By the time the train his West Falls Church there was ZERO room. I suspect this happened several times.

They handled the number of people REALLY we at the Vienna station. There were probably 200 people in line in front of me and we boarded a train in about 15 minutes (including buying a pass). They had two workers with stacks of pre-printed round trip tickets to sell. Worked very well.

[SFspiderman]

Originally Posted by darman1484

They had two workers with stacks of pre-printed round trip tickets to sell. Worked very well.

As we had plenty of time to stand in line waiting for our own tickets at West Falls Church, we wondered why they weren't doing that. WFC had one worker standing up at the ticket machines helping people out...that was it. Not that it mattered, as there were no trains with room to board, but we didn't know that at that point. We could see the throngs of people on the platform below as we waited in line for tix, but we wrongly assumed that they were making some progress down there.