For the Obama inauguration, Authorities will be closing major parts of D.C., and northern VA. Starting the 19th, the secret service will be closing most of D.C. to vehicle traffic. At 2am on the 20th, police will close 395 and rt66 at the beltway. Only authorized vehicles will be allowed on 395N and 66E.
In addition, after 2am, Key bridge, Roosevelt bridge, and the 14th st. bridge will be closed except to authorized traffic. Memorial bridge and Chain bridge will be open to pedestrians only.
The streets will reopen for rush hour on Jan. 21.
Inauguration visitor estimates: 5 million!
Here's a linky to some more details.
http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/DC-MD-VA-Release-Inauguration-Transportation-Plans.html (http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/DC-MD-VA-Release-Inauguration-Transportation-Plans.html)
As noted 66 and 395 are coming to be closed, inside of the beltway. This of course is going to make for all sorts of messy spill over onto all the surrounding roads. And if you've got to drive into DC from NOVA (may god have mercy on your soul) you're looking at having to go through MD.
For Peds, I'd expect that the Key bridge sidewalks will be open to foot traffic - but I'm not sure.
http://inauguration.dc.gov/getting_there.asp (http://inauguration.dc.gov/getting_there.asp)
"# Making the decision â€" should I go?
* Do you have the physical stamina to stand outside in the cold in a large crowd for 6 hours or more and then spend additional hours getting back home or to your hotel?
* Are you are comfortable in extremely large crowds?
* Can you walk long distances to get to and from your destination?
"
5 million? Where's that number from? Biggest Iv'e seen is 3.2 million... which is still astronomical... but 5?! Sweet jebus
I for one, am stay home that day. Living in NOVA and working in Silver Spring mean going through the heat of that madness... no thanks.
I'm just thankful that our "powers that be" have decided that our 2 DC offices don't need to be open on the 20th!
glad I will not be there!!
At the convention center today, they had "Inaugural commitee training " going on. Must've been a thousand people there. I guess they were training to help direct the folks coming to the inauguration.
We will be in Los Angeles for the weekend thru Wednesday
To hell with all this crap!
So how's it looking up there so far?
Commute to work via metro was quiet... the paranoid side of me says it's the 'All's quiet on the western front' sort of quiet.
But, that big concert yesterday seems to gone off w/o a hitch. So far so good - we'll see what happens tomorrow.
Quote from: yuu on January 19, 2009, 07:08:15 AM
Commute to work via metro was quiet... the paranoid side of me says it's the 'All's quiet on the western front' sort of quiet.
But, that big concert yesterday seems to gone off w/o a hitch. So far so good - we'll see what happens tomorrow.
while I agree with YUU on the 1st part (but would charachterize it as the quiet calm before the storm) , the big concert was apparently problem free...but getting out of there wasn't so much and the unified forces of police and so forth didn't think to use it as a dry run for tommorrow and taking care of traffic issues like they could have...or as I have said...used a lack of forethought in handling of what reality is going to bring as apposed to their dream world of how they percieved things are going to happen.
WELL...on my commute in to work this morning it was rather pleasantly light and hearing traffic reports of jammed up lines to get into Metro parking facilities and cops posted in lots of visable places at the ready for whatever...but that was me leaving the house at 6am-ish and getting to work before 6:30...
I watched some of the post inauguration "Man on the street" interviews. I thought it was hilarious hearing people complain about the cold, the wind, and how hard it was to get around D.C.
Has anyone seen any figures on how many people attended?
Not sure about the 'hard to get around' bit. I walked down, saw the Inauguration, walked back to my g.f.s and then we drove back to my house. If you were on foot or bicycle, it was very easy to get around (except things got crowded around the purple gate)*. I'm guessing the people who were complaining were those that must have missed the 1,348 "Don't drive that day" warnings that everyone gave out. It seemed that around 6 or 7 lots of people decided to try and drive to the fancy balls or maybe drive home, even though half of DC still had the Natl Guard blocking lots of streets (as detailed in the aforementioned 1,348 warnings).
The cold bit - I was surprised myself that it was freezing in D.C. in January. I mean, it's normally like 75 isn't it?
* unless you were a ticket holder - a generator at one of the gates died and so without the metal detector they had to search people by hand. This caused a huge delay and a bunch of ticket holders never got in. A coworker had friends from Colorado that waited 4 1/2 hours and eventually gave up. Needless to say they were bummed.
LA is nice right now, it was 75 yesterday but cooler today.
DC during the iniuguration? fuggedaboudit!
The flight back was practically empty..
we watched some of it on TV, every 3 minutes (on cue) some buffoon crying her eyes out.
the sister went to several of the balls. she pregnant doged about getting to and from. guess it's hard to walk in those Jimmy Choos wearing couture in 15 degree weather. waah.
I rode the monster down from Silver Spring. I left at 10:15am There were VERY few cars on the road and I got a rockstar parking spot at 3rd and Constitution. Walked right on to the mall at 3rd and Independence about 5 minutes before the program started. I was home less than a half an hour after the program was over. Piece O' Cake on the moto.
EDIT - it don't count without photo - rockin' the full perf 80's jacket no less
(http://photos-a.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-snc1/v2065/50/40/1545666740/n1545666740_129272_950.jpg)
You made it past the check point grizzly Adams? I keed... but you do look thrilled to be there
Quote from: yuu on February 01, 2009, 08:33:46 AM
You made it past the check point grizzly Adams? I keed... but you do look thrilled to be there
Harr Dee Harr Harr. Yeah, gotta work on the whole smile thing.....The beard helped keep the 18 degree air out of the helmet on the ride down. 3rd was closed to pedestrians when I first got there. There were also mega lines to get into the ticketed area. About five minutes out, they just opened up everything - no security, no nothing.