by Arlington
I was at a Commercial Real Estate tech convention and saw a really interesting "heat map" of Brightline ridership.
placer.ai is designed for retailers to answer the question "where do the people who walk past my store come from?" (and many other questions, such as, based on home zip, what is their disposable income?) *
Placer.ai tracks something like 40% of all phones and for a particular square block (I chose the Brighline Miami Central Station) they can say where every phone that visited that block spends its "overnight" (essentially the home address of everyone who rides brightline) (They extrapolate "up" from their 40% sample to estimate total unique visitors)
Yes, it helped to be both a data geek and a railfan in asking about Miami Central which, in the satellite view, was still an empty parking lot, but which we now know is a busy train station.
Unsurprisingly, the heatmap showed that most riders come from "slightly inland" (west) of each station in MIA, FLL, & WPB.
The interesting "extra blob" on the Heatmap was centered on Port St Lucie--implying that people are driving from PSL to WPB and then catching the train to MIA.
*Yes, this should scare you about how much data is being sucked out of your smartphone and re-marketed all over the commercial internet.
placer.ai is designed for retailers to answer the question "where do the people who walk past my store come from?" (and many other questions, such as, based on home zip, what is their disposable income?) *
Placer.ai tracks something like 40% of all phones and for a particular square block (I chose the Brighline Miami Central Station) they can say where every phone that visited that block spends its "overnight" (essentially the home address of everyone who rides brightline) (They extrapolate "up" from their 40% sample to estimate total unique visitors)
Yes, it helped to be both a data geek and a railfan in asking about Miami Central which, in the satellite view, was still an empty parking lot, but which we now know is a busy train station.
Unsurprisingly, the heatmap showed that most riders come from "slightly inland" (west) of each station in MIA, FLL, & WPB.
The interesting "extra blob" on the Heatmap was centered on Port St Lucie--implying that people are driving from PSL to WPB and then catching the train to MIA.
*Yes, this should scare you about how much data is being sucked out of your smartphone and re-marketed all over the commercial internet.
"Trying to solve congestion by making roadways wider is like trying to solve obesity by buying bigger pants."--Charles Marohn