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Pedestrian flow analysis
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United Kingdom
Pedestrian flow analysis for councils and place teams
Weekly footfall, density and transport mode for any UK street, town centre or public space. Measured over time, not simulated.
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Up to 5 locations. No cost, no commitment.
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Pedestrian flow analysis shows how many people move through a street, square or town centre, where they concentrate and how they arrive. Huq gives councils and place teams weekly footfall, density maps and transport mode for any UK area, with no counters or surveys. Use it to plan public realm schemes, test road changes and show the effect of regeneration, before and after the work.
Pedestrian flow analysis in the Huq platform
The overview is a general tour, not a pedestrian study. For street-level work, look at the Explore map heat maps, which separate visiting from passing traffic, and note that any boundary can be drawn: one street, a square or a whole scheme area. Those are the building blocks for a before-and-after comparison of a public realm scheme.
- Heat maps of visiting vs passing traffic
- Footfall density across a scheme area
- Transport mode for people arriving
Trusted by 300+ organisations · Data across 35 markets
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What is pedestrian flow analysis?
Pedestrian flow analysis measures the volume and pattern of people moving through a place. Planners, highways teams and place managers use it to size footways, design public realm schemes, judge road closures and track whether regeneration brings more people in.
It is usually done in one of three ways: manual surveys on set days, fixed counters at chosen points, or simulation models of how crowds might move. Huq is none of these. It does not simulate crowd movement or count people at a single crossing. It measures footfall, density and transport mode across any area you draw, every week, so you see real patterns over months and years rather than a snapshot from one survey day.
That makes it a good fit for before-and-after studies, comparing streets within a town centre, and showing funders how a scheme changed the way people use a place.
What's in your pedestrian flow analysis
01
Footfall by street or area
Weekly footfall for any street, square, park or town centre boundary you draw.
02
Density maps
Heat maps show where people concentrate and how passing traffic spreads across an area.
03
Transport mode
See how people arrive, to inform active travel and parking decisions.
04
Before and after schemes
Compare periods either side of regeneration or public realm works, and against similar town centres.
What pedestrian data shows
Three views place teams use to understand movement through an area.
01
Where people concentrate
Density maps across your area show busy and quiet streets, so you can see which routes carry most people.
02
How people arrive
Transport mode shows how visitors reach the area, useful evidence for active travel and parking plans.
03
Change over time
Weekly trends and period-on-period change show whether a scheme, closure or event altered pedestrian activity.
Pedestrian data for any UK street or town centre
Huq covers any address in the UK: high streets, shopping centres, retail parks, competitors' stores and sites you haven't opened yet. No counters, sensors or cameras needed.
Huq manually validates more than 1,000 locations in each of its 35 markets twice a year, and data refreshes weekly.
How it works
Step 1
Tell us your locations
Add up to five addresses in the form. Your own stores, candidate sites or competitors.
Step 2
We run the analysis
Our team maps each location from observed visitor data.
Step 3
We walk you through it
A short call to take you through what the data shows and what it means for you.
Why councils use Huq for pedestrian flow analysis
- Huq publishes its accuracy by country: an 18.7% median error in Great Britain against landlord-reported footfall.
- JD Sports, a UK retailer, got 25% more precise catchment analysis and 18% lower new-store location risk.
- Ripon BID saw footfall up 164% year on year.
- Trusted by 300+ organisations across 35 markets, including the global insights, research and location intelligence teams at Nike, Adidas, JD Sports and Samsung.
huq's platform gave us valuable data to support a key decision on potential new sites.
Dan Brogden
National Sales Manager, Puccinos
Who it's for
01
Retail chains of any size
From five-store retailers planning their next site to global brands: choose locations, track store performance and benchmark against competitors.
02
Retail property owners
Show centre performance, support leasing and get the tenant mix right, for landlords, asset managers and brokers.
03
Investors and private equity
Check how retail brands and assets actually perform before you buy, and monitor them after.
Everything Huq measures, in one platform
- Footfall: by week, month and year, with totals, average daily footfall, trends, period-on-period change, and visiting vs passing traffic.
- Residents and visitors.
- Catchment and travel time: catchment by postcodes, plus drive-time and travel-time analysis.
- Demographics and profiling: age, gender and purchasing power.
- Behaviour: visit frequency, dwell time, time of day and dayparts, cross-visitation between up to 10 location pairs, and international visitation for tourism.
- Footfall density and transportation mode.
- Places, brands and industries: points of interest, brand locations and brand analysis, industry performance, shopping centre and retail centre types.
- Geo-spend: spend by volume and category at any UK location, via Experian.
- Tools: the Explore map (draw any area or use layers for travel time, catchment, shopping centres, retail centres, brand locations, industries and postcodes), White Space Analysis, and Projects for monitoring many locations and reporting to stakeholders.
- Delivery: the platform, CSV or Excel exports, monthly PDF location reports, and data feeds as Parquet and CSV files into Amazon S3 or Google Cloud Storage buckets.
- Cadence: data refreshes weekly.
Frequently asked questions
What is a pedestrian flow survey?
A pedestrian flow survey counts people passing set points, usually on a few chosen days. It gives a snapshot. Huq can complement or reduce repeat surveys with weekly footfall, density and transport mode for any area, so you can see seasonal patterns and long-term change without arranging new counts.
What is the difference between pedestrian counts and pedestrian flow modelling?
Counts measure people who actually passed a point. Modelling simulates how people might move through a space, often one that doesn't exist yet. Huq sits with measurement: it shows observed footfall and density across areas each week. For a new design, it can set the baseline a model is tested against.
What are the pros and cons of pedestrian counts?
Fixed counters are precise at the point where they're installed, but they only see that spot and need installing and maintaining. Manual counts are flexible but short. Huq covers whole areas with no hardware, though it reports area-level footfall rather than exact counts at a single doorway or crossing.
Can pedestrian data show the impact of a road closure or public realm scheme?
Yes. Compare footfall, density and transport mode for the weeks before and after the change, and against the same period last year. Huq also shows residents vs visitors. Huq's Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park case in London showed footfall up 28% over the 2024 MLB weekend.
How often is the data updated, and which areas are covered?
Data refreshes weekly. Huq covers any area in the UK: streets, squares, parks, town centres, transport hubs and retail parks. You draw the boundary yourself on the Explore map, and accuracy is published at an 18.7% median error in Great Britain.
What is in the free analysis?
Use the form on this page to tell us the streets, town centre or scheme area you want to look at. Huq's team runs a free analysis of footfall, density and transport mode for that area and talks you through the results.
Questions? Talk to us
Book a demoAbout Huq
Huq is a location intelligence company. We turn anonymised mobile location data into footfall, catchment and visitor insight for any place, so retailers, property owners and local authorities can make decisions on evidence.
See how your locations really perform
Up to 5 locations. No cost, no commitment.