Pasig River Esplanade vs Dolomite Beach | footfall analysis

The Dolomite beach is an artificial beach – a project of DENR which opened Oct 16 of 2021. The project was an instant success in terms of visitors peaking at 121,744 visitors in one day according to the authorities.

Given its popularity, we want to try and conduct a simple footfall report of the area. Alongside Dolomite beach, the Pasig River Esplanade (PARES) is also added to create a comparative report.

Phase 1 of PARES, a 500 m esplanade, is part of the bigger Pasig River Rehabilitation project by the Inter-Agency Council for the Pasig River Urban Development (IAC-PRUD). Phase 1 of the project opened last January 17 – garnering huge social media attention. For simplicity, we will call Phase 1 as simply Pasig River Esplanade in our charts.

The dataset covers January 25 to Feb 21 (4 weeks) as we want to compare the 2 spots directly. We did not include the first week of the Esplanade opening, as government held events might boost the Esplanade’s number and will be unfair comparison with Dolomite beach.

Our initial question coming into this study was which of two receive more visitors on average?

Dolomite beach received around double the visitors of the Pasig River Esplanade.  This is not surprising since the artificial beach is approximately 12 times bigger than the esplanade. But is size really a big factor?

To provide context, let’s place this comparison in line with other open spaces and parks in Metro Manila. Adding the Iloilo River Esplanade Phase 1 might also give us insight on the projection of footfall for the Pasig River Esplanade Phase 1.

Using our weekly footfall counts, Quezon City Memorial Circle received the highest numbers by a wide margin. Both Pasig River Esplanade and Dolomite beach got the lowest values and ranked the lowest among our list. Again this is expected as land area and unique visitor counts have a 0.9 correlation – a sign there is a relationship between the two.

We are expecting footfall for the Pasig River Esplanade to increase as development for the next Phases continues. Phase 1 is just 1% of the total 52 km Pasig River Esplanade.

As for Dolomite Beach projections, the funding for the project stopped 2023 as the government pivots to more holistic rehabilitation of Manila Bay area and its surrounding estuaries. We need more months to track whether the visitors for this spot has already reached a plateau.

Footfall density

If we want to eliminate the area factor, a simple solution is to use density data by dividing the visit counts by the area.

With that adjustment;

The Pasig River Esplanade overtakes Rizal Park in average weekly footfall per square meter – denser POI footfall. The emergence of Plaza Lorenzo Ruiz, the smallest open space here, raises some questions on our measure. Running the numbers, we can confirm that the correlation is weak between the area and density (r = -0.21). Therefore, size is not a good predictor of how dense an area will be (at least for our small number of public spaces included). A good reason for this is due to the unique case of Plaza Lorenzo Ruiz as a small plaza in the middle of a busy Binondo centre, pedestrians use it as a center island when crossing to the other side.

In summary, Dolomite Beach does receive more visitors per week at least between Jan 25 to Feb 21. Both places ranked the lowest in terms of footfall counts. The Pasig River Esplanade exceeds Dolomite Beach in terms of footfall counts per square meters – a great sign considering Phase 1 is just 1% of the proposed 52 km Pasig River Esplanade project.

After getting the footfall counts, We also want to investigate further into time of day visits and effect of weekend or weekday.

Weekend or weekday

The Dolomite beach is more likely to have more visitors during weekends – compared to the even distribution of visits for the Pasig River Esplanade

To put into context;

The Pasig River Esplanade had the most homogenous distribution of visitors among other open parks and spaces. Dolomite Beach is tied with Jaime Velasquez Park in Makati at the bottom of this list. So if you are planning to visit Dolomite Beach, (if it’s open), try to go during the weekdays.

Time of day

The chart above is unsurprising, almost all places are visited during weekends, but how about time of day? Which of these places are visited during the night?

Time of day chart reveals Dolomite beach had one of the lowest visitor counts in the evening – which could be attributed to the operating hours of the area (until 6pm only). In this charts, we defined “evening” to be between 8 pm to 4 am. The rationale for this time frames is to cut 24 hours into equal 8 hour intervals. Keep that in mind when interpreting this chart.

Pasig River Esplanade, had the highest share of visitors in the evening. Apart from being open 24 hours, the esplanade shines brightest in the evening – quite literally, with bright led lights illuminating Pasig River along the length of the Esplanade itself, and the riverbanks surrounding it.

Caloocan People’s Park had the highest share of morning goers among our list of open public spaces.

Comparative footfall analysis provides a deeper understanding of POI footfall data. By contrasting several POI with each other – we can flesh out the similarities and differences of their visiting patterns . Businesses can utilize this report to further learn about their competition and their own. This is just one of the many applications of geospatial data. Stay tuned for more case studies like this one and consider contacting us if you want to learn more about our products! Email us at info@inquiro.ph.