Posted on 01/20/2009 4:26:14 PM PST by angkor
No, those aren’t giant ants swarming around the Washington Monument all the way up to the U.S. Capitol Building. This is the first satellite image of the inauguration taken at 11:19 AM EST today by the GeoEye-1 satellite. This is the same satellite that supplies Google with images for Google Maps and Google Earth, so we may see this image show up there one day as well.
All those clumps of people in between the Washington Monument and the Capitol are clustered around Jumbotron screens. The image was taken from 423 miles in space and shows objects as small as a half-meter. Click on the image for a larger view. (I had to compress all the images to put them online). That doesn’t look like two million people. Does it? TechCrunch T-shirt to the first reader to accurately count all the ants.
And while we're at it, those 9 or 10 clumps of people don't look like a total of 1.5 million to me.
Does anyone with a better sense of it think that there are 150,000 or so people in each group?
Cool post. Thanks.
Big crowd, but no way that is over a million. Unless you are using the accounting methods of a million man march.
"It looks more like a distribution of ants around spilled food than anything else. Shame there wasn’t anyone nearby with a large magnifying glass."
If there were 250,000 in front of the Capitol, then I am also thinking 1.5.
I know the U.S. Park Police got out of the business of releasing crowd estimates a while again. When it seemed every group that had a rally in DC, from Pro-Life groups to the Million Man March bitched that the count was too low.
it's a SWAG for sure, but, it looks like no more than 250,000 to me.
You really think 250,000 at the Capitol?
Metro ridership is a good first indicator, especially on a day when they would not let any cars in or out of the city.
It’s hard to use the numbers from the press release, because it doesn’t indicate ingoing vs outgoing, but
“The transit agency says that as of 6 p.m. Tuesday, more than 930,000 passengers had used Metrorail, breaking Monday’s record of nearly 887,000.”
First, note that Monday was a record, and there were more today. But nobody thinks over a million people showed up on the mall yesterday.
Second, assuming most people left by 6pm (given the temperature, I don’t know why they would stay), 930,000 passengers would suggest about 470,000 people each way.
And while the feds were shut down, not all business was stopped, so you’d think that at least some of those 470,000 were NOT going to the mall.
Of course, there is the possibility that every person who LIVES in DC and normally would go to work but were off because the fed and city were both closed might wander down to the mall. But I think there are only about 700,000 people living in DC.
They did let buses in, and I haven’t heard how many buses went in, I presume the metro number includes metrobuses but not private and charter buses (although I’m not sure private/charter buses were allowed downtown either).
So it is hard to imagine how you would get 2 million people on the mall, if you had 470,000 round-trippers on Metro and 700,000 people living in the city.
But it was a very cold day, and there certainly were a lot of people who showed up when the view from their living rooms was better.
It would be funny if your estimate is right. More people turn out for Mardi Gras every year in New Orleans!
My estimate is 50,000 to 75,000 in each clump. I’ve been to events on the West Lawn of the Capitol several times over the years, and that crowd in the photo looks like the 60,000 to 80,000 I’ve heard bandied about in the past.
So multiplying that by the 9 or r 10 “clumps” I’d guess (emphasize guess!) there were 500,000 to 750,000 in attendance. Not the 1.5 million they’ve been tossing about on the TV news here in DC Metro.
From the DC Metrorail web site (and as Charles Wayne notes above 973,000 “trips” = about 486,500 round-trip riders):
http://www.wmata.com/about_metro/news/PressReleaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=2439
As of 7 p.m. 973,285 Metrorail trips on Tuesday, January 20
Even before the day had ended, Metro set ridership records on Inauguration Day.
People took 973,285 trips as of 7 p.m. The figure breaks the all time rail ridership record of 866,681, which was set yesterday.
[snip]
Metrorail’s Top 20 Weekday Ridership Days
Date Ridership Event
1 01-20-09 973,285 (as of 7 p.m.) Obama Inauguration
2 01-19-09 866,681 Obama inaugural events
3 07-11-08 854,638 Baseball/Women of Faith Conference
4 06-09-04 850,636 Reagan State Funeral
5 06-25-08 846,388 Smithsonian Folklife Festival/Baseball
6 07-10-08 844,530 Baseball
7 07-08-08 835,072 Baseball/Basketball
8 07-02-08 834,956 Smithsonian Folklife Festival
9 04-03-07 831,508 Cherry Blossoms/Baseball
10 06-24-08 831,464 Baseball/Basketball
11 06-20-08 829,998 Baseball/Basketball
12 04-24-08 828,973 Baseball/Basketball
13 04-17-08 828,418 Pope Visit/Soccer
14 04-11-08 828,132 Baseball/Cherry Blossoms
15 06-27-08 825,862 Smithsonian Folklife Festival/Baseball
16 06-18-08 823,516 No Event
17 07-01-08 822,931 No Event
18 04-10-06 821,283 Immigrant Rights Rally
19 06-19-08 819,979 No Event
20 06-26-08 819,722 Smithsonian Folklife Festival
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