Washington Cherry Blossom Festival and event transit

In the past, I've suggested as part of Presidential Inauguration Weekend, that transit on the Metrorail system and in DC should be free, if only as a throughput-transportation demand management measure.

-- "Should transit on Inauguration Day be free?," 2013/2016

Note that DC will be launching free surface transit later this summer ("Free ride: DC unveils bold plan to boost public transit," Associated Press), something I'll get around to writing about ("Is making surface transit free the best transit investment DC can make?," 2016).  So that makes a chief element of that idea realizable.

Photo by alphanumeric.

Seeing the Washington Post article "3 maps for getting to the 2023 Washington, D.C., Cherry Blossom Festival," about getting to the Cherry Blossom Festival, I had a similar thought.  

1. Besides improving public transit services on the National Mall generally.

 --  "New DC Circulator route serving National Mall reminds us that we are neglecting connections from west to east and fail to adequately connect Georgetown to the National Mall," 2015
 -- "Revisiting: a proposal for heritage streetcar service on the National Mall | adding service to the DC waterfront"

2.  Why not improve transit on the National Mall specifically for the Cherry Blossom Festival, a highly important special event?  Note that back in the day Capital Transit provided weekend transit service to East Potomac Park.  And note that maybe the DC Circulator National Mall bus line is enough as it is (although it doesn't go to Georgetown).

3. Make it free.  Again, that's more out of simplicity than anything else.

--  "Transperth transit (Perth, Western Australia) provides free transit to certain events, like the Red Hot Chili Peppers concert on 2/12/2023," 2023