How many people are at the Seahawks parade again?
The number floating around — mentioned by the team in the days before the parade — is 750,000 to 1 million. Factor in unbridled enthusiasm, civic pride, regional chauvinism and the number that’s dominated headlines is 1 million.
That is, to put it mildly, a lot.
The Seahawks cited “The City of Seattle” as a source for the estimate.
The Seattle Police Department headlined a news release with “A Million People Downtown?” But then did not answer their own question in the text of the news release. The Seattle Department of Transportation estimated 750,000-plus in a social media post. Public Health — Seattle & King County estimated 1 million in its own social media post and pointed back to the Seahawks as a source.
Ethan Bergerson, a spokesperson for the Seattle Joint Information Center, said Wednesday the city’s number came from the parade’s organizer: Seafair.
Seafair’s event application estimated 850,000 people.
“The Seattle Office of Economic Development’s special events office estimates the attendance ranging from 750,000-1,000,000 people based on Seafair’s estimate as well as historical attendance at similar sized events,” Bergerson wrote in an email.
The Seahawks parade in 2014 also saw estimates of 700,000 to 1 million. After the fact, crowd-estimating experts (which are apparently a thing) looked at overhead pictures, crunched the numbers on how much space a standing person occupies, and estimated the crowd at a much more modest 250,000 to 450,000. No shame there — that’s still a lot of people.
Just how many people is 1 million?
That’s 1 in 4 people in all of King, Pierce and Snohomish counties. That’s 1 in 8 people in the entire state of Washington.
Let’s, just for a moment, for illustration’s sake, assume everyone arrived by light rail.
A four-car Sound Transit 1 line train — at absolute max capacity — can carry about 1,000 people. It would take 1,000 of those trains to get 1 million people downtown. Trains are running every six minutes. Assuming people are coming equally from both the north and the south, it would take about 50 hours, or more than two full days, for 1 million people to arrive downtown by light rail.
David Gutman: 206-464-2926 or dgutman@seattletimes.com. David Gutman covers local politics and King County government at The Seattle Times, reporting on how leaders and institutions impact the lives of everyday people.