The Challenge
Leverkusen's center in Wiesdorf hosts markets, festivals, open Sundays, and one of the region's biggest carnival parades. The city and its business development partners wanted to know what each of these actually does to footfall, and whether the effect justifies the effort.
The Solution
In May 2022, Ariadne measuring points went live on light masts of the local utility EVL across the Wiesdorf pedestrian zone: Wiesdorfer Platz, the Marktplatz, Breidenbachstrasse, and the walkway toward Friedrich-Ebert-Platz. Event days are compared against normal days, with dwell times and flows between zones, without cameras and without capturing anything personal.
The Impact
Carnival Sunday 2024 brought 13,515 visitors to the measured zones, against 2,489 on the Sunday one week earlier. The Saturday before, when the parade weekend met Bayer Leverkusen's win over Bayern Munich, added almost 10,000 extra visitors to the center. An open Sunday in April 2023 drew 37,726 visitors, more than double an average weekend, and the 2023 culture festival showed 58% of its visitors flowing from Breidenbachstrasse onto Wiesdorfer Platz. Numbers like these give the city hard evidence for planning security, cleaning, and event budgets.
