Washington, DC's metro is slammed with marchers trying to get to the National Mall

On Inauguration Day, Washington, DC’s metro cars and buses were emptier than usual. Despite road closures, traffic was subdued. Outside of the roughly 250,000 people who attended President Donald Trump’s swearing-in ceremony, and the thousands of anti-Trump demonstrators staging protests in the surrounding streets, Washington, DC, had largely gone dark for a day.

Only a day later, just getting to the nation’s capital is proving much more difficult, as hundreds of thousands head to the National Mall for the Women’s March on Washington.

Los Angeles Times reporter Matt Pearce captured the difference on his ride into the city:

Although 220,000 people have committed to going to the march on Facebook, event organizers are expecting half a million people to participate, DC’s deputy mayor tweeted Saturday.

As of 11 am, 275,000 people had ridden DC’s metro, eight times a typical Saturday and busier than most weekday’s, WMATA tweeted. By comparison, 193,000 people had ridden the metro by 11 am yesterday.

Videos and photographs of packed metro stations in surrounding Virginia and Maryland continue to pour in, and by 10 am the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority has already announced that several metro parking lots are already close to capacity.

For a city that overwhelmingly voted for Hillary Clinton (90.9 percent of DC residents cast their ballot for the Democratic candidate in November), it’s not a particularly surprising outpouring of support.

But marchers are not only coming from DC and its surrounding suburbs. In the days leading up to march, there were multiple reports of planes filled with women flying to Washington to march.

Similar marches have also been planned in more than 600 cities around the country — and even internationally — to amplify the message on Trump’s first official day in office.