Traffic counting
Traffic counting is recording the number of vehicles, usually with automated technology such as AI cameras, entering or exiting a location to understand things like conversion rates or drive-thru speed of service.
What is traffic counting?
You’ve probably encountered people counting technology, for example when going through the turnstiles in a subway station. Traffic counting is the same, only counting the number of vehicles driving by a location.
Similar to people counting, traffic counting provides valuable information that is utilized by governments to decide where to build new roads, what areas require more bus services, or when to repave a street. However, the use cases go well beyond government projects. One place that traffic counting has become particularly important is drive-thru analytics.
Traffic counting has evolved over the years from a person manually counting cars, for example, as they enter and exit parking lots to AI cameras that can do this automatically. Existing security cameras can now be used for traffic counting.
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Why is traffic counting important?
Traffic counting unlocks a lot of secondary value. Here are some of the metrics that can be calculated using traffic counting:
- Conversion rate
- Average drive-thru speed of service
- Number of cars through the drive-thru per hour
These metrics can provide even greater insights when put to work. Here are some areas of your business where traffic counting can help:
- Measure the car traffic of a location before expanding.
- Enhance planning, including the design of your drive-thru.
- Manage occupancy capacity of parking lots.
- Test and measure the effectiveness of marketing and advertising campaigns.
