As hundreds of thousands of people headed for the Women’s March on Washington, Metro ridership made it over the million mark yesterday for just the second time in the history of transit system. The only time that WMATA recorded a higher tally was during President Barack Obama’s first inauguration.

The official count for Saturday: 1,001,616 total trips.

During Obama’s first inauguration, Metro ridership hit a high-water mark of 1.1 million (the crowd size, estimated at 1.8 million people, also set a new record). In 2013, it was around 800,000. A typical weekday is around 640,000. The official total for Donald Trump’s inauguration is 570,000.

Experts on crowd sizes told The New York Times that the Women’s March appeared to be about three times larger than Friday’s swearing-in, which was decidedly not record-breaking no matter the lies told by Donald Trump’s press secretary. The National Park Service no longer provides official crowd statistics, and estimates for both events have varied widely.

Metro was originally planning to have regular Saturday service, which is more limited than weekdays, but added about two dozen trains to help manage the influx. It wasn’t remotely enough, with waits topping two hours at points in the day. Many people reported that Metro employees directed them through open fare gates to ease crowding, so the actual count is higher than the official figures, according to NBC’s transportation reporter, Adam Tuss.

The mayor and other officials took to Twitter around midday to warn riders that the system was at full capacity.

“We were projecting large crowds, but no one knows exactly what ‘large’ means,” a Metro spokesman told The Washington Post last night after a day in which lines stretched for blocks around Metro stations across the system throughout much of the day.

Despite the tremendous crush of people, the crowd was in high spirits. One woman, seeing a crowded platform in Columbia Heights around 9:15 a.m., shouted “This is amazing!”

Waves of chants spread throughout stations close to the rallying point, riders stopped to chat with those around them, people had plenty of time to pose with strangers and their signs.

“After the inauguration I got stuck on a train with angry Trump supporters—my actual nightmare. This is a dream, being stuck on Metro with angry feminists,” said Grace Honeywell, a University of Oregon student who was among the hordes waiting extraordinarily patiently at the L’Enfant Station.

Cally Iden, an artist from Philadelphia, was stopped every few minutes as she and her 6-year-old daughter shuffled to the faregates—laughing marchers wanted to congratulate her on a glittering sign that read “Urine Trouble!” with a showerhead of yellow streamers raining down on a photo of the president.

In fact, the only being who seemed truly displeased with the crowd was an explosives dog spotted hiding behind the legs of his Metro Transit Police handler. “He doesn’t like it when they cheer,” the officer said as he kept an eye on the steady stream of people climbing the three banks of escalators.

In the late afternoon and early evening, stations throughout downtown had lines that wrapped up and out of the station for blocks. Many marchers took one look and decided to walk to wherever they were going or wait it out in nearby restaurants.

Filed Under: inauguration, inauguration 2017, metro, wmata, women's march, women's march on Washington,