City of Melbourne Pedestrian Counting System
Infrared sensors mounted on poles and awnings have counted pedestrian movements across central Melbourne since 2009, growing to 99 locations by 2025. The city publishes hourly and near-real-time counts as open data; researchers have used it to track COVID-19 CBD recovery, test pedestrian-safety correlations, and nowcast state retail sales.
📊 Impact
99 sensor locations recorded 312.9 million pedestrian movements across Melbourne in 2025; comparing only sensors present in both years, growth was +1.2% versus 2024 (City of Melbourne open data, analysed by Rock Posters, June 2026).
🎓 Lesson
Headline year-over-year growth figures from an expanding sensor network can overstate real foot-traffic change — the 2026 analysis found a 7.7% raw increase but only 1.2% on a like-for-like sensor basis.
📖 Terms in this entry: Open data · Urban data platform (UDP) · 15-minute city
Sources
This overview was generated with AI from the public sources listed above and checked against them before publication. It has not had a complete human fact-check — treat it as a starting point and follow the sources.
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📎 Cite this project
1001 Smart Cities (2026). “City of Melbourne Pedestrian Counting System” — Melbourne, Australia. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/melbourne-pedestrian-counting-system/ (last verified 2026-08-01). Data: CC BY 4.0.
The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.