Astros Parade crowd size math (Houston, San Antonio: live, mayor, rain)

[RMESMH]

Originally Posted by Dopo

Let's round this up to 7 people per section .... 11 x 11 .... that gives 850 just in that parking garage

That garage is at the corner of Travis and Walker. I was on Walker, on the street, just far enough away from the southeast (?) corner with Milam that I couldn't see around the corner (I'm a little over 6' 3" and I could see over most of the people in front of me) and look south (?) down Milam...down the parade route. I got to that spot at around 1130 am. I was standing next to an HPD SUV, and there was another HPD SUV on the other side of Walker, a few vehicle lengths back..closer to the garage in the pic you posted. The officers were not with their vehicles...they were 'managing that corner' (Milam and Walker) apparently quite well , and did come back a couple of times to motion for kids to get off the SUVs, and the adults around the SUV we were near made sure they did. Every building we could see the top of had people on the tops of those buildings. There is a balcony (rooftop?....possibly for a restaurant?) oin Milam about 1/3 ? of a block down Milam, north ? of Walker on the west ? side of the street. Some people were sitting on that ledge, and one guy was dangling his feet over the edge . There were three of four generations of the same family standing in front of me....an 80 year old Houston native, his 55 year old son (also a Houston native), and their 5 (about to tun 6) year old great grandson/grand nephew. The 5 year old was born in L.A., and moved back with his parents about a year ago. They converted him from a Dodgers fan to an Astros fan right before the season started . The parade finished passing just before 245 pm, and we started walking away from the route at that point. I was parked in the ABC lot on Rusk (behind the Hampton Inn), and it took me about 2 hours and 20 minutes to get back to my car, get out of the lot, and get on the other side of 59 (a couple of blocks away from Minute Maid Park), where the absolute gridlock finally eased up a little bit. I wanted to run into natives who had been denied a championship in one of the three major sports for 20+ years, and I got my wish. I LOVE the local teams, but if you grow up in one place, you're apt to root for those teams (and another/others you have a reason to add when you are a kid). For over 50 years I've primarily been a 'Bay Area + the Lakers' fan, so I've been lucky. 'My'/those 6 teams (in the 3 major sports) have won (through June of this year) 29 championships in the last 45 years. Baseball is my favorite of the three sports...I also wanted to be around people experiencing an MLB championship for the first time and I got my wish. IMO, the best thing about Houston, and about Texas, is the people ...and the rest of the nation and the world got to see that by how many responded to Harvey . The nature of the people here, and seeing the joy of a first champioship radiate through such people, made this special for me . I've seen a game at every park in the majors and, IMO, Minute Maid is one of the best places to see a game .

[astrohip]

Originally Posted by txdemo

Parade route is 1.5 miles (roughly 8000 feet).

Assuming 2 feet per person would be 4000 people lining the street. Let's give a generous 20 people deep - that's 80,000 people.

Mayor Turner estimates that 750,000 people will attend.

Maybe Trump is doing the counting?

That's not how crowd sizes are figured. People line up like sardines, not in nice, small, organized 2' squares.

A million people is a wildly optimistic (and ridiculous, if we're being honest) figure. 80,000 is the size of a line at a good BBQ joint, so that's on the low side.

One well-known writer who often does TG parades said there were around 300,000 to 400,000 people.

[astrohip]

Originally Posted by Jack Lance

I assume these were people coming into town from west of Bear Creek and Katy. Judging by this there very well may be double the usual number of people downtown as usual. How many is that ?

???

Approx 125,000 people work in downtown. 175,000 if you include Midtown and environs.

Double that would be 250,000 to 350,000 people. Which is inline with previous guesstimates of the crowd size.

[astrohip]

Originally Posted by txdemo

Parade route is 1.5 miles (roughly 8000 feet).

Assuming 2 feet per person would be 4000 people lining the street. Let's give a generous 20 people deep - that's 80,000 people.

Twenty people deep...?

[txdemo]

My new estimate is 24 million people.

[astrohip]

Originally Posted by txdemo

My new estimate is 24 million people.

And that was just for the parade. Another 6-8 million were at City Hall!

I always looked forward to Ken Hoffman's column after any big parade--Thanksgiving, Rockets, whatever. The city would put out an estimate like "750,000 people attended", and he would proceed to tear the number apart. Based on simple math & space projections.

Where is Ken these days?

[WRM20]

Originally Posted by astrohip

And that was just for the parade. Another 6-8 million were at City Hall!

I always looked forward to Ken Hoffman's column after any big parade--Thanksgiving, Rockets, whatever. The city would put out an estimate like "750,000 people attended", and he would proceed to tear the number apart. Based on simple math & space projections.

Where is Ken these days?

Culturemap Hoffman's Houston Series -CultureMap Houston

[Dopo]

Originally Posted by txdemo

My new estimate is 24 million people.

You must be the guy that did the Trump inauguration crowd calculations

[Prey521]

News this morning said about 1 million. I work on Travis and Texas and decided to stay home. I remember the '96 Yankee Parade down the Canyon of Hero's and how insane it was to get out of that, so I wanted nothing to do with this. My neighbor, who works a few blocks over from me, went into work on Friday.......left at 2:30p and didn't get to the Park and Ride in Humble until 6:30p!!! He got the last seat.....I would have felt bad for those that had to stand for that entire time on the bus.

[Thoreau424]

I could care less what the numbers were. The turnout was awesome, the energy intense, and the appreciation was so thick you could "cut it with a knife". That's all that matters. This wasn't a contest to try to get into the Guinness Book of World Records.

The party-poopers and naysayers who gripe over numbers and legalities can go f-off.