In case we haven’t been doing a good enough job drilling it into your head, public transportation has become increasingly popular in the D.C. metro area since gas prices have been going through the roof. Today, WMATA announced that Friday, July 11 saw the Metrorail system hit a brand new all-time record high for ridership, surpassing even that of the day of Ronald Reagan’s funeral in 2004. What contributed to the 854,638 passengers who rode Metro on Friday? There was a Nationals game, and there was a large convention in town. But there are Nationals games all the time, and there are large conventions in town near every weekend. The message of this news shouldn’t be that unusual circumstances led to a new record; it should be that this was more or less a regular summer day, and Metro smashed its old record.