Town centre footfall monitoring: measure the high street like a store
A high street faces the same questions as a store, at street scale: how many people pass, when, from where, and did the last campaign or opening change anything. Town centre footfall monitoring answers them with comparable, anonymised flows, measured on the Wi-Fi already in the street.
Measured on existing Wi-Fi infrastructure, anonymised and approved by a data protection authority.
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What makes it work
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Flows per street and stretch
Footfall per street, stretch and hour, comparable across periods and against other centres.
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Anonymous on the public street
Wi-Fi measurement on existing infrastructure, anonymised at source and approved by a data protection authority, with no cameras pointing at the public.
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Evidence for levy votes and grants
Year-on-year series, campaign before-and-afters and place comparisons that hold up in a council report or a levy renewal.
A high street competes with suburbs, malls and e-commerce, and it does so without the one thing every store has: a till. Sales data tells the centre nothing about the people who walked it. Town centre footfall monitoring gives the high street what the store has had for years, at street scale. That changes what a BID or a council can argue for, fund and defend.
What town centre footfall monitoring answers
Which streets carry the centre, and which are quiet? When does the evening economy actually start? Did the festival lift the whole centre or draw a crowd for one night? How does this centre compare with the next town over, year on year? Footfall monitoring answers those questions as a continuous series rather than a one-off count, so the centre’s performance is visible week by week and season by season.
Why BIDs and councils measure
A BID is renewed on evidence, and a council’s investments are judged on outcomes. Measured footfall feeds both: the levy-renewal ballot, the funding application, the post-campaign report, and the argument about whether the pedestrianisation or the new market worked. When the number is measured the same way every year, the discussion can start from the data.
Wi-Fi measurement on a high street
Footfall on a high street is measured on the Wi-Fi infrastructure already in the street and its businesses, with cellular network data adding the wider catchment. No cameras point at the public, no one is identified, and personal data is irrevocably deleted at source, leaving only anonymous, aggregated statistics. The method is the only footfall method in Europe approved by a data protection authority, the Swedish IMY. That matters even more on a public street, where a camera proposal starts a privacy debate before anyone discusses a budget. For more on measuring in public space under GDPR, see GDPR and traffic measurement in public space.
How it differs from city analytics
City analytics asks how the city moves: traffic, transit and catchment across a whole municipality. Town centre footfall monitoring asks how the high street performs: which streets carry the retail, where the evening economy starts, what a campaign did to the centre. The wider city picture is on city centres & smart cities.
Getting started with a pilot street
Most centres start with a pilot on one or two streets and the infrastructure already there, then expand as the series proves itself. The City of Västerås has run the approach for years, growing centre visits year on year and finding that its assumed main street was not its busiest. Read the City of Västerås case, or book a demo and see your own streets as a flow.
Telia's partnership with Bumbee Labs is important for us to expand our business. It allows us to develop our use cases for location and movement insights to be even more granular. By combining our anonymized and aggregated mobile network data with Bumbee Labs solution of GDPR-safe Wi-Fi probe data, we ensure that the collection of data follows the strictest guidelines of GDPR compliance all the way.
Frequently asked questions
How is footfall measured in a town centre?
On the Wi-Fi infrastructure already in the street and its businesses, with cellular network data adding the wider catchment. The signals are anonymised at source, leaving only anonymous, aggregated statistics. No cameras are pointed at the public and no one is identified.
Is Wi-Fi footfall monitoring GDPR compliant?
Bumbee Labs' Wi-Fi method is the only footfall method in Europe approved by a data protection authority, the Swedish IMY. Personal data is irrevocably deleted at source, leaving only anonymous, aggregated statistics, which is what a measurement on a public street should produce.
Can we compare year on year?
Yes. The measurement runs continuously and the same way every year, so year-on-year, season-on-season and centre-to-centre comparisons hold up in reports, funding applications and levy renewals.
Privacy compliance on the public street
Town centre measurement from Bumbee Labs runs on the only footfall method in Europe approved by a data protection authority, so you get public-street data without a privacy debate.