It should be no surprise that Times Square typically has some of the heaviest foot traffic in all of New York City. However, like the rest of the City, Times Square saw record lows in foot traffic in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Times Square automated counting system — phased in between August 2011 and September 2012 — provides 24/7 data on the number of pedestrians who enter and pass through specific counting zones of the Times Square Bowtie. We have 27 cameras located on seven different buildings, monitoring 33 unique locations in the area. This data allows us to estimate that:

• Times Square is regularly seeing between 250,000 and 300,000 pedestrians a day.  In 2020, roughly 125,000 pedestrians entered Times Square each day.
• On the busiest days, Times Square has pedestrian counts as high as 400,000.

In March of 2024, the Alliance completed the process of upgrading our pedestrian counting camera technology to be more precise and accurate. As a result of these upgrades, 2024 location-by-location data cannot be compared to pre-2019 camera counts because the methodology and technology have been updated. If you have specific questions regarding historical data, please reach out to our Policy Planning and Research department at research@tsq.org and our Communications department at press@tsq.org.