Times Square Alliance
MRI Software counts in Times Square from 33-stories high. That’s 7 people per second, 24 hours a day. Averaging 206,000,000 counts per year.
Our approach
The Times Square Alliance (TSA) approached MRI Software to monitor visitor and vehicle traffic on every sidewalk and highway into and out of Times Square – New York.
When the Times Square Alliance elected to move from manual to automated counts, they focused on the area with the most density and sales potential – Times Square between 42nd and 47th street. Working with private building owners, they secured counter locations that mimicked the historical manual count program that ran twice a year.
The plan:
- Monitor advertising space and sell based on visitor impressions
- Monitor visitor and vehicle activity between 42nd and 47th street
- Provide daily and hourly data on location and retailer attractiveness
- Aid congestion planning, relief and improve public realm design
- Monitor event visitor flow, behavior and improvements
Pedestrian counts have always been the most important information for the Times Square Alliance – providing incredibly helpful for retail brokers, developers, event planners, congestion relief and public realm design.
Once a year the Times Square Alliance could answer the question ‘How many people came through Times Square?’ With the MRI cameras, they are now able to provide that answer every single day of the year how many people came through Times Square, and what hours are the most popular.
We can give you exact traffic information for when you want to do your event, the time of the day, the day of the week, the week of the month, the month of the year, the seasons; and we were never able to do that before.
Ellen Goldstein,
Vice President of policy planning and design, Time Square Alliance.
This information has been used to populate sponsorship and advertising decks, attract premium retailers and restaurants to Times Square, locational impact of news-stands on flow and pedestrian analysis on mobility in the right-of-way.
Experimenting with the data, the TSA can now predict the best days to schedule events based on the historical data, monitoring the quantity and density of visitors on and given day. Something that, without MRI counters wasn’t possible.
Using foot traffic analytics data, the Times Square Alliance can tell you the biggest audience you could possibly ever reach in any public space, and can prove it.
Ellen, Vice President of policy planning and design, Time Square Alliance said “We have the best information on how many impressions any one of our signs are receiving, because we have this ongoing information.“
