Inauguration Service Plan 2021... it's not good.

MARC is resuming service today but says WMATA service is still limited as security is wound down.

I'm betting 50/50 the mods will delete this, but the reality is transport was used as a pawn in what's turned out to be a game of knee-jerk security theater, and transit riders nationally (as there were also service reductions in some of the blue state capitols) bore the brunt of what's looking like the biggest over-reaction I've come across in recent history.

STrRedWolf wrote: ↑Sun Jan 17, 2021 6:06 pm I could go deep into the whole mess, but the end result is "Congress largely got spooked because they were out for blood, and they escaped." Imagine what would happen if Congress got killed. If you think this was overkill, you ain't seen nothing yet.

Were they going to shout them to death? Not a single protester was arrested for being armed, which tells me that nobody was armed inside the Capitol because that would have been front and center in the coverage.

I maintain that transit shut-downs set a bad precedent. People participating in large "peaceful protests" will find always other ways to participate (assuming they'd even consider public transport in the first place), so why punish people simply trying to make a living and get to work?

What also sets a bad precedent is how the military were kicked to the curb today. Troops who left home on a moment's notice to "guard" the seat of government and were sleeping on cafeteria floors for the past week were kicked out of the buildings they'd been guarding without notice once the cameras were turned off, and told to go sleep in parking garages or outdoors. Yeah, it's the military and they should be able to do things like that, but it's a huge sign of disrespect.

Bottom line... the optics on all of this suck. Transit needs to be reliable and safe. Shutting down at the first hint of "bad people with signs" doesn't look that great or build public trust.

eolesen wrote: ↑Fri Jan 22, 2021 2:53 am I'm betting 50/50 the mods will delete this, but the reality is transport was used as a pawn in what's turned out to be a game of knee-jerk security theater, and transit riders nationally (as there were also service reductions in some of the blue state capitols) bore the brunt of what's looking like the biggest over-reaction I've come across in recent history.

Of course it was knee-jerk and over-reaction. You don't let stuff like that slide without a reaction, and there's several groups that were impacted by the attack alone. It also hit some upper management, causing them to resign as ineffective.

That said, it wasn't all for nothing. They did catch a few "lone wolf" attackers trying to sneak in.

(to "if Congress was completely dead...")

Were they going to shout them to death? Not a single protester was arrested for being armed, which tells me that nobody was armed inside the Capitol because that would have been front and center in the coverage.

Not with firearms, no... but then security staff inside the Capitol wasn't armed with firearms ether. Besides, a flagpole makes a good melee weapon.

I maintain that transit shut-downs set a bad precedent. People participating in large "peaceful protests" will find always other ways to participate (assuming they'd even consider public transport in the first place), so why punish people simply trying to make a living and get to work?

I would maintain that the precedent was already set by BART and their policy of shutting down cellular service on the entire system when there's a riot at a station. That was during the Obama administration, if I remember correctly.

Bottom line... the optics on all of this suck. Transit needs to be reliable and safe. Shutting down at the first hint of "bad people with signs" doesn't look that great or build public trust.

Agreed on the optics. Some of it is understandable, but it definitely doesn't look good.

This could of been prevented, of course. There was many signals over the past four years that were missed. This is being investigated now.