(Photo: Jay Westcott)

The first reason -- aside from the fact that 825,437 trips were taken -- was a choice made by Metro. For better or worse, they decided to stick to their track-work schedule, even though event organizers told them to expect ridership numbers similar to the Glenn Beck rally -- an event this one vastly surpassed.

When you have to single-track along stretches of several Metro lines -- as along the Red, Green, and Yellow this weekend -- ideally you won't do it on a day when perhaps 200,000 people are converging on the National Mall from all corners. But Metro as a general policy doesn't monkey with their repair schedule once they've laid it out. Spokesman Steven Taubenkibel doesn't recall whether the Rally to Restore Sanity had been announced before Metro firmed up its calendar, but he says the agency stands by its decision to continue the work through the rally.

"The best time for us to do it is on the weekend," he says. "We could not postpone it. It had to get done."

That work included repairs on a crumbling station platform in Rockville and some "ground stabilization" over at Cheverly.  If they had decided to push it back, Taubenkibel adds, it would have thrown off their schedule through the rest of the year. Workers will be out on Metro lines and stations every weekend through December save for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Another reason for the overcrowding was a choice made by rally organizers with Comedy Central. They declined to fork out money for extra rail service. If they had, then some riders wouldn't have been prevented from boarding trains at stations like Columbia Heights and Braddock Road, where would-be passengers had to watch one overstuffed car after another pass them by.

A lot of organizers shell out the dough to make sure trains run with high frequency before and after events. An early opening typically runs about $29,000, and the rates for extra trains depend on how long you want them to run and between which stations. The folks behind the U.S. Army Ten-Miler and the Marine Corps Marathon decided to do it. Though Metro was in talks with Stewart's people about it, they ultimately decided to take a pass, perhaps because they didn't anticipate many more people than at Beck's rally. (Beck's people didn't pay for extra service, either.)

"That's their choice," says Taubenkibel. "They said no."