Opinion: A Million People? That Number’s Way Too Rosy

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Every January, somebody in authority says it, and every year, we reporters believe it, and regurgitate it.

Television, radio, even some newspapers give it tongue -- and credence: ``A million people....’ ‘A crowd of a million....’ ‘A million eager fans lined the route of the Rose Parade.... ‘’

Impossible. Can’t happen. A million people cannot fit along the route of the Rose Parade.

The Pasadena Star-News, and then The Times, gave voice to this challenge about 30 years ago. Every year, someone in the police department had put forth that nice, tidy figure as the crowd estimate. So big, so satisfying, so easy to repeat.

Then, the Star-News relayed the calculations of readers who challenged that number and put the actual figure at about 400,000. It reprinted 20-year-old stories that three Caltech PhDs had figured the crowd had to max out at 500,000.

A Times science writer took a tape measure, along with the laws of mathematics and physics, to the parade route himself, and worked out an absolute maximum number of 668,000, giving each parade-goer 2 square feet of space.

True, Southern Californians may be more body-conscious than the rest of the country, but even so, 3 square feet is really a more reasonable figure per person, and that, the Timesman found, worked out to 445,000 spectators.

Any of those is still a fine and impressive crowd count, but still, it bursts the million-spectator bubble. And yet every year, the number gets revived and believed, a myth too deeply rooted to be corrected.

Decades ago, when a Pasadena police spokesman was confronted with the science, he finessed it beautifully, pointing out the tons of trash left along the parade route, saying, ``This mess isn’t left by a milliion people, then those who do attend should be ashamed of themselves.’’ The man would have had a brilliant career in politics.

‘Million’’ is the number that’s out there again this year. It’s too late to unring this particular New Year’s bell. All I’m asking is that you keep the math in mind for next year’s parade. We should start the campaign round about September, and dedicate ourselves to ending the Million Fan Myth.

Los Angeles Times photo