Metro ridership smashed records on inauguration day

Washington's mass-transit system destroyed its records for ridership with traffic on inauguration day.

More than 1,120,000 passenger trips were recorded Tuesday, an increase of 250,000 over the previous record set the day before.

Before last week, the highest number of single-day riders came last March on a day when a Washington Nationals baseball game and a women's conference brought nearly 855,000 people to the rails.

Metro's trains weren't the only points of congestion Tuesday. OmniRide commuter buses, which took passengers from park-and-ride lots in northern Virginia to nearby Metro stations, also set a ridership record that day -- an estimated 13,000 riders.

That's a 40 percent increase from the 8,900 commuters who typically take the buses.

-- Media General News Service