Morning Roundup: Tourismgasm Edition

Good morning, Washington. Did you brave the city's busiest tourist weekend since the Obama inauguration, or are you just now removing the barricades from your front doors? Washington, D.C. was without a doubt touristastic all weekend thanks to the National Cherry Blossom Festival and four major sports events, causing traffic to come to a near standstill through most of downtown and the Metrorail to be seemingly clogged around the clock. Some residents we've talked to couldn't pass up their annual cherry blossom pilgrimage, but plenty just stayed far, far away from the mess. Is it as simple as believing if you've seen one year's pink flowers, you've seen 'em all? The Post has a story this morning examining the financial impact to the city: people came, but they didn't stay overnight in hotels or spend a lot in restaurants.

Metro's Mystery Rider Program Looks Set to End: Pair of stories from the Examiner's Kytja Weir over the weekend about Metro's Mystery Rider Program, where WMATA pays a research company to hire people to ride the system and evaluate customer service. An early preview of the year-old program's first report shows that the mystery riders found a lot to complain about. But the real story is that thanks to the agency's large budget shortfall, Metro's board pretty much already decided to kill the program before it even had a chance to discuss the report, and all they can promise is that planned budget cuts will most likely cause customer service to get even worse. The economic reality appears to mean that the agency won't even have the option of implementing systemic reform to address the criticisms reported by the mystery riders.

Mass Shootings Prompt New Norton Statement: D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton may have started to change her tune Friday on giving in to adding on an amendment to the D.C. House Voting Rights Act that would wipe out the city's gun laws, but today she appears to be back to her original position: the amendment is bad. In the wake of several mass shootings like those that left 17 dead in New York and Pennsylvania over the weekend, Norton appeared on WUSA this morning to warn her House colleagues that killings like those this weekend could come to D.C. unless the gun amendment is eliminated from the voting rights bill. The Hill had her prepared statement last night: "Because the bill is on a glide to the passage she has worked for throughout her tenure in Congress, Norton is seeking to get the gun amendment removed rather than allow the bill’s passage with the dangerous amendment attached."

Briefly Noted: Early morning accident snarls Beltway traffic ... Two people killed in PG County car vs. tree accident ... Body found in Potomac River ... Ex-Miss Maryland charged in drug conspiracy.

This Day in DCist: In 2007, we wished every single Metrobus had those cool Knight Rider-style lights up top, and in 2006, we discussed some of the biggest myths about D.C.