The Ann Arbor City Council met Monday evening in Larcom City Hall to discuss the increasing levels of downtown foot traffic, Arbor South construction and anti-discrimination policies regarding traffic stops. The discussion marked the last council meeting of the month.
The meeting began with an update from the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority on downtown pedestrian traffic. AADDA Executive Director Maura Thomson shared data from Placer.ai, which uses phone data to estimate pedestrian traffic and sort it into three categories: visitor, resident and employee visits. Thomson shared that data shows downtown foot traffic is highly correlated with the University of Michigan’s schedule, peaking during football game days and Parent & Family Weekend and strongly dropping during school breaks. Thomson also noted the amount of foot traffic in downtown Ann Arbor has grown.
“In 2024 we have exceeded pre pandemic visit levels,” Thomson said. “The yellow bar — that’s 2025 data — those are visits from January through September, and you can see that in 2025 we have exceeded that same period from 2024 just slightly, by about 1.6%.”…