Station and transport hub passenger flows

Passenger counting at a station or transport hub serves many stakeholders: property owners and management, transport companies, shops and restaurants, media sales, security and the authorities. Each has its own questions, and zone analytics answers them with one set of numbers. Bumbee Labs is the company behind the only footfall method in Europe approved by a data protection authority.

The short version

• Passenger counting here covers flows, dwell time and crowding per zone: ticketing, platforms, waiting areas, food court, shops and corridors.
• Wi-Fi usually runs on the access points already in the station and covers the whole site; LiDAR or 3D sensors add exact in/out counts at the doors that need them.
• The same data serves operations, tenants and rents, and advertising and event spaces.
• The data is calibrated against manual control counts and delivered as dashboards on the Explore portal or through an API.

What problems do station and transport hub operators solve with footfall data?

Where do crowds and bottlenecks form in our station hall, before anyone sees them?

A station hall is shared by ticketing, platforms, shops and corridors, so crowding builds where their flows meet. Wi-Fi measures flow and dwell across the whole hall, and LiDAR or 3D sensors count exactly at the busiest doors. Zone occupancy shows which parts fill first; the hot zones and recurring peaks mark where bottlenecks form and where to act first.

Where should shops and service points go, and how should doors and passages change?

Zone measurement shows which entrance travellers use, which zones they visit next and how long they stay, including at the shopfronts they only walk past. Station heatmaps turn that into a picture of where a shop or service point reaches people and where doors and passages need adapting.

Our old counters missed people in the rush hour. Which figure can we trust?

The figure to trust is the one calibrated against manual control counts. Bumbee Labs measures with Wi-Fi across the hub and adds LiDAR or 3D sensor counting at the doors where in/out precision is needed.

What should the shops and restaurants in our station pay in rent?

Rent talks in a station are easier with measured figures for what each frontage receives: passers-by, entries and dwell per zone. A few extra access points cover the frontages people walk past, so the owner comes to the negotiation with its own footfall figures, as in the Stockholm Central case below. Footfall data for lease negotiations covers the method.

How do we price the screens and event spaces in our station?

Prices for screens and event spaces in a station follow the flow past them. Measure reach, impressions and dwell at each screen, event spot and pop-up space, then price each position on how many people pass it and how long they stay. The same zone data supports rents for those spaces. DOOH metrics explained defines the figures.

When can we service escalators and lifts with the fewest travellers disturbed?

Maintenance and cleaning in a station work best when few travellers are in the way. Hourly footfall / visitor count per zone shows when each corridor, hall or platform area is quiet, and reports from hourly to monthly turn that into a plan. Allocating resources by measured use improves the traveller and commuter experience and supports a smaller carbon footprint.

What happened to the flows when the traffic or the building changed?

Measure the same station zones the same way before and after a change in the traffic, an entrance or the building, then compare. Paths, flows and zone correlation show whether travellers now take another route, and hourly to monthly reports follow the effect. Benchmarking footfall explains how comparison works.

Which other station questions does the data answer?

• How do we sell more in the station’s shops and restaurants when travellers have only minutes to spare? Dwell time per zone and the funnel from passers-by to entries show where travellers pause and where they walk past.
• How do we plan cleaning and toilet rounds by actual use? Zone counts by hour, delivered as periodic reports, show the load on the areas that cleaning crews cover.
• When is the station quiet enough for deliveries to its shops? The hourly pattern per zone shows the quiet windows, so deliveries and logistics can run when they disturb travellers least.
• Where do our travellers come from, and where do they go next? Entrances and exits are measured at the station, and mobile network data extends the view to the wider catchment beyond it.
• How do we compare our stations with each other? The analysis identifies hot and cold zones, bottlenecks and anchor stations.
• Cancelled trains put sudden crowds on platforms and in the hall. How do we see where? Zone measurement shows where people accumulate, and the Crowd Alert add-on can notify a team when a zone passes a threshold you set.
• We need a plan for the pinch points in the station. What should it rest on? Zone occupancy and flow show where crowding builds, which gives the safety work measured data to start from.
• How do we staff service points and security around the commuter peaks? Counts by hour show the peaks across the day and the week, as a basis for optimising routes, schedules and staffing and for reducing transport-planning costs.
• How do we show travellers where it is crowded so they choose another route? Zone occupancy goes to your own systems through the People counting API, so it can be shown on screens or in an app that you run.
• What about metro and bus stations, terminals and interchanges, with their waiting areas, bays and transfers? They are zones like any other, measured in the station or terminal and not on board the vehicles.

How does passenger counting work across the whole hub?

Bumbee Labs measures movement and dwell in every zone of the hub. Wi-Fi people counting usually runs on the access points already deployed, and very large open-air or multi-entrance hubs can add LiDAR or 3D sensors at the entrances. Wi-Fi then covers flows and dwell across the site, and the sensors give high-precision in/out counts at the doors where precision is most important. See hybrid people counting for how the methods combine.

Case study: Stockholm Central

Jernhusen chose Bumbee Labs for accuracy and documented GDPR compliance at Stockholm Central, a major transport hub with a large mix of shops and restaurants and very high daily commuter volume. With zone analytics it re-planned staffing, lifted shop and F&B spend, reduced bottlenecks and crowding, and valued its advertising spots. It also took the footfall figures into rent negotiations with its tenants. See the case studies for customer examples.

Where else does the same method apply?

• Airports have their own end-to-end journey and method mix: see airport passenger flow.
• A single rail station has its own page: train station passenger flow analytics.
• Stations are also the gateway to the surrounding centre: see city centres and smart cities.
• If you sell screen space in the hub, see DOOH analytics for outdoor advertising.