New York City wants to use anonymous cellphone data to determine new traffic patterns after the COVID pandemic.The city of New York is trying to figure out who's coming back to the city after the pandemic using something everyone has in their hands - cellphone data.
Eyewitness News already did some of the work, analyzing cell location data from this spring and comparing it to the same time period in 2019. We found in the downtown areas, including both Midtown and Wall Street, there is about 71% of the cellphone activity compared to before the pandemic started. "We're all working typically three days a week in the office, I carry my phone in with me, it knows that and knows that probably on Mondays and Fridays in New York City, there's probably a third of the number of phones that are actually in the city," Ulanoff said.
"If you're in your office only half the time, then that's half of the services you need in New York City in and around your office," said Partha Deb, an economist with Hunter College.