First, there's a really good summary of what went wrong posted up on Huffington Post. (As a side note, Jason Linkins is becoming one of my favorite bloggers)
I just wanted to expand on what I wrote in my earlier post about what it was like in the tunnel. We got there on time at 6:30 AM. The gates were supposed to open at 8:00 AM, and the tickets told everyone to arrive early and be prepared for long lines. We got there and followed the line into the Purple Tunnel of Doom until we were probably somewhere under the Reflecting Pool.
There were 7 people in our group and we were just amazed at how long the line was. Sara's quote was something along the lines of, "I don't feel so special anymore". We figured there were at least 20k - 45k people in front of us. Janet thought the line resembled the kind of line you'd find at a football stadium and therefore reasoned that the line contained 45,000 people. Sara thought the number was closer to 20,000. I think it was probably somewhere between those two.
The line did move, it wasn't totally static, but it wasn't evident why the line was moving. We didn't know if it was just bunching up and getting wider and shorter, it was actually moving because people were getting in, or if it was getting shorter just because people were giving up and leaving.
At around 10:30 AM, the listed starting time for the festivities, I called my mom and tried to get her to put her phone near her TV so we could hear what was happening. At this point we were going up the ramp leading out of the tunnel and I thought that just maybe we'd get past the security gate in time to see the swearing-in. My mom couldn't get the audio to work well enough for it to be worth listening. Much later, we'd call my dad with my sister's phone and get it to work better.
The line was generally cheerful for most of the morning. The people behind us kept trying to start a wave. It sort of worked but it would die out after about 100 feet or so. We did some Obama chants and Yes We Can/Did chants. The worst part was the police escorts that kept coming through. They would come through with their sirens blasting and just expect this huge line to get out of the way. That and they seemed to alternate which side of the tunnel they came down. One of the motorcades was particularly awful - the third or fourth car back was a police surburban with its siren going full blast. The officer driving the car had a megaphone and was leaning out the window yelling at people to get out of the way or they would be arrested. It was totally stupid because by the time you could hear what he was saying, you were already out of the way. It just created unneeded tension.
I didn't see any police or volunteers in the tunnel. This was probably the biggest problem. If there had been baracades, signage, and volunteers keeping the line working like a real line, I think this whole mess could have been avoided (or at least it wouldn't have felt so bad). It's stupid that there was so little organization because I know of many people who would have volunteered to work the inauguration.
One last point: The people who got stuck in the Purple Tunnel of Doom ended up far worse off than people who didn't get a ticket. Not only did they have to wait in a tunnel in freezing temperatures for hours, but a lot of them didn't even get to see any of the inauguration. If they hadn't had tickets at all, they probably would have gone onto the mall with the general crowds or stayed in a cafe, bar, or hotel room to watch on TV. This was an epic fail on the part of the PIC and the Police. The fact that all of the Obama staff, the ones who put in 16 hour days, didn't get to see the inauguration turned a sad day into a tragedy.
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