When managing a march, marshals and organizers can spend a lot of time thinking about the speed at which the crowd will travel.
The chart below shows a range of speeds in feet per minute, miles per hour, and minutes per block, using the average spacing for Manhattan numbered streets of 264 feet per block — 200 feet for buildings and 60 feet for most streets, periodically extended to 100 feet for larger streets every ten blocks or so, yielding twenty blocks per mile.
Rise And Resist typically leads marches at deliberately-slow pace of roughly one mile per hour, or 80 to 100 feet per minute, or around three minutes per block.
Organizations in the PSL orbit (TPF, PYM, ANSWER, et al) have a younger membership and typically march at around one and a half miles per hour, or around two minutes per block.
All of these marching speeds are slower than the typical walking speed for an individual making a short trip around the city, like walking to the deli or hustling to the subway, although unsurprisingly those speeds vary greatly depending on age, ability, and urgency.
Trained military units can march at higher speeds in close formation, but untrained crowds of mixed ages and abilities trying to match those speeds will tend to spread out and develop gaps and stragglers.
