The day after the Inauguration, Saturday 21 Jan, the Women's March Washington made sure that women's issues are considered by the new administration.

From an expected 200,000 the crowds swelled to over 550,000 and over 1.2 million rides on the metro, that day, not counting most of the 10,000 women and men on the 1800 buses parked at RFK stadium who mostly hiked the 2 miles to the start of the March. It was an enthusiastic success!

Sustainability! The Women's March Transportation organizers welcomed Electric Cars (EV's) to encourage a sustainable future for Women and humanity. These EV's shuttled handicapped (ADA) marchers from the various RFK bus lots to special ADA transit points and also took many cars full down to the Mall or to the nearby Stadium-Armory Metro ADA elevator. We estimate we got maybe 250 butts-in-seats to experience an EV ride.

Ham Radio Communications: As with any large gathering of the public all in one small area, Cell phones were practically useless or took over 15 minutes to even handle a text message. For this reason, Ham radio volunteers stepped in to provide critical backup communiucations. (see report).

ROLLING CLEAN, 29 April 2017! After the march, now we want to see if we can get National EV organizations to come together and organize a Rolling Clean for the upcoming national Climate March on 29 April 2017.

The remainder of this WMW pre-planning page is retained for historic purposes.

There remained a small possibility of using EV's to shuttle a few VIP's around the crowds.(P.S. IMPOSSIBLE due to grid lock from the overwhelming response)

EV Driver Volunteers! Most EV volunteers are from our own EV Assocation of DC Area (EVADC) and some we found from Plugshare and the Tesla Owners group.

See the EV driver list so far.

MAP Notes: The exact route for ADA vans (contractor) and our EV's are on our own! See the map. The morning pickup is definately at RFK stadium North(7) and South(8) parking lots and the drop off point is 4th St SW and C street as shown. The route inbetween is up to you!. The return in the afternoon leaves from the other end of the march on Virginia avenue and return people to RFK.
Postscript: Amazingly we found we could easily drive right down to within a block of the march on each run because so many people feared grid-lock, no one else even attempted driving the city streets. We were almost driving at will!

EV Car Signage: You must post the EV, ADA signs below to identify your vehicle as an ADA EV. You will have to copy and PRINT these yourself. Use the images below to clearly identify your car on Front, Back and both sides. Also print any EV handouts you can think of to give to your passengers about EVs. I prepared an "EV tear-off thingy" you can print and prepare with scissors for them to tear-off our web page links. See below.

Communications: If you have an FRS walkie talkie, bring it along. We will use it to maintain comms within our group and organizers since Cell service will be overloaded. Set your radio to channel 7 tone 3 (almost any 14 or 22 channel radio will do). I will have Ham Radio which then links me into all the other Comms networks as needed. See WMW Ham Radio Frequency Plan.

The PLAN-B: Its Plan B! The initial plan was PLAN-A, with EV's only shuttling from south parking to north parking. But now WMW says they got an ADA pickup/dropoff on the south side in Lot 8 which means then Plan B shown above. Our EV's will be able to shuttle all the way to the mall (from the south arriving at 4th St SW and C street to dropoff). Or if it takes too long, we might do Plan C which is a shorter loop that simply takes ADA folks to the Metro ADA elevator as shown on Plan C. Spread out and pickup from both North and South lots evenly.

Here are the ADA dropoff points down at the mall. This is where the special ADA vans adn EV drivers will dropoff in the Morning and pickup in teh afternoon. THough it is not real clear to me where the afernoon pickup is, and how to get back to RFK.

Click to see RFK ADA Shuttle Plan A. (obsolete) This was for the EVs at RFK to shuttle from South Parking to North parking ADA point.

Click to see RFK ADA Shuttle Plan B. This has ADA pickup points in both North and South lots, so the EVs will simply join the ADA vans shuttling downdown or to Metro (Plan-C).

Click to see RFK ADA Shuttle Plan C. This is a shorter route that simply shuttles ADA folks to the Stadium-Armory METRO ADA Elevator.

Afternoon Plan 4-7 PM The afternoon ADA pickup on the mall is at the west end on Virgnina avenue. But details are sketchy and who knows how to drive back to RFK? They understand that some of our volunteers might not be able to do both and so they recognize if we split to cover both periods that our numbers will fall. The other application is hauling some VIP's around right down at the march - This is still in work. I suggested the larger Tesla's might be best there.

Parking: RFK stadium opens at Midnight for bus parking only. No cars (except our marked EV's will be allowed in). Buses begin arriving at 4 AM. We begin at 5 AM.

Charging: See the overall DC area venue and Home Chargers nearby. I also found two 120v outlets which might be useful in an emergency?... To see the hundred or so commercial chargers within 2 miles of the capital go to the plugshare site. An email has been sent to each of the home chargers above to see if they will join the effort and/or will let some of the shuttles charge after the initial dropoffs. .

You should print your own SIGNS! Your EV and shuttle needs to be clearly marked! We found it would take almost $30 per car for commercial signs on vinyl, so we suggest you simply COPY the images here and print them on two sheets of 8.5"x 11" paper using the "scale to fit" option and bring your own. Post on all four sides of your vehicle. (and hope it doesnt rain, or put it in a plastic document protector.) I find that the BLUE masking tape works very well and will not leave any mark on your car.

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