Acceptable trip distance for walking in mass religious gatherings—A case study of world’s largest human gathering Kumbh Mela in Ujjain, India

Abstract

The optimum location of various facilities in mass religious gatherings, which are of common occurrence in countries like India, is affected by characteristics of walking that include the acceptable trip distance and the accessibility of various facilities based on this acceptable tripdistance. An understanding of this acceptable trip distance would help in developing various planning strategies that could promote the sustainable mode of walking in such mass religious gatherings, and thereby also possibly improving crowd control and management. Aptly, the present study focuses on analysing the various socioeconomic factors that affect the walking behaviour of people in mass religious gatherings and also develops a formula to calculate the acceptable walking distance.Kumbh Mela which is considered as the world’s largest gathering was the case study for this research. The data was collected during Kumbh Mela 2016 held in Ujjain, India during 22nd April to 21st May 2016. The study found trip purpose having a greater influence on traveller’s decision to walk. The results revealed that primary activities including ‘offering prayer’ have a greater acceptable trip time/distance than secondary activities like ‘having food’. Further, the study also elicited the highest acceptable time for ‘holy dip’ among all primary activities.