ANONYMOUS connection data captured by the O2 mobile network within the last month suggests that commuter numbers in Belfast are barely a quarter of what they were pre-pandemic.
The figures point to the fact that city-based office employees are still generally working from home, but also hint at a surge of people coming into the city on Fridays.
The data collected by O2 Motion - which analyses connections to O2 mobile masts to gain a picture of movement trends - revealed that total crowd volumes in Belfast on the last Monday in January reached just 3,700 at their lunchtime peak compared to 15,100 on a comparative Monday in February 2020.
The data, captured over the week from Saturday January 29 until Friday February 4, suggest that working from home is still the majority choice during the week, but crowds are very much returning to Belfast as the weekend approaches.
Friday is now the busiest weekday in the city, with crowds topping 4,700 at lunchtime (pre-pandemic, weekday crowds peaked on Thursdays).
It seems that tourists, shoppers and revellers are not deterred over the weekend – with weekend crowd numbers back to just over half of what they were the month before the first lockdown hit, the O2 Motion data shows
Saturday is now the busiest day of the week, with crowds on January 29 topping 6,100, compared to 11,400 on the same day two years ago.
Chris Wroe, head of data and analytics at Virgin Media O2 Business, told the Irish News: “At a time when footfall can change at a moment’s notice, this data shows us that Belfast’s crowds – whether commuters, shoppers, tourists or revellers – are still a way off from what they were before restrictions first came in two years ago.
“It’s clear that working from home is still the majority choice during the week, but looking at recent anonymous crowd movement patterns does show us that visitor numbers are on the up at weekends.
“Understanding changing movement trends is key to planning office spaces, understanding how we eat out and shop, and prioritising everyday services like transport – so we expect data insights like these to continue to play an important role as restrictions lift.”
The area tracked by the data covers the main city centre area, comprising most of its larger office blocks and many of the city's most popular pubs and restaurants.
O2 Motion is based on connection data between a device and the phone mast only.
