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Encinitas presents 2024 beach‑visitor counts: more than 3 million visitors and new automated counters
Summary
City staff reported annual beach‑visitor data collected by automated counters, noted the move to smaller battery‑powered sensors with cloud transmission, and described how data supports sand‑nourishment planning and resource management.
Anushka Iyer, Coastal and Sustainability Aide in the City of Encinitas Development Services department, presented the city’s 2024 beach‑counter report to the Environmental Commission, reporting more than 3 million visitors at city‑managed beaches in 2024 and outlining recent equipment and data‑management upgrades.
Iyer summarized the program’s history and scope: lifeguards manually counted visitors before 2001; since then the city has transitioned to automated counters. The city manages six beaches (Grandview, Beacons, Stone Steps, Moonlight, D Street and Swami’s) while California State Parks manages beach access south of Swami’s. Iyer said eight counter sites are active, including three at Moonlight Beach (pedestrian ramp, emergency ramp and roundabout), and that the program uses Eco Counter sensors with passive infrared (Pyro) technology and EcoVisio cloud software for data transmission and analysis.
Iyer said EcoVisio reported a 2024 total of more than 3,000,000 visitors and an average daily count of 8,326. She identified the single peak day as June 15 with 24,117 visitors and the peak month as July (446,568 visits). For Moonlight Beach, the city applies a multiplier (3.6), derived from a pedestrian‑count technical study, to account for additional access points that are not instrumented.
Iyer explained program benefits for planning and reporting: the counts help justify sand‑nourishment projects, support resource‑management and operational decisions, assist forecasting of sales and transient‑occupancy tax revenue, and satisfy annual reporting requirements to California State Parks under the city’s lease/MOU. She described recent upgrades from larger wired sensors to smaller battery‑powered Pyro sensors (batteries with long lifespans) and the adoption of automatic cloud data transfer to reduce field retrieval.
Commissioners asked about tracking out‑of‑town visitors, long‑term trends, and program costs. Iyer said the current sensor program counts physical bodies and is not configured to identify visitor origin; she said the city has considered but not implemented JS‑based cellular tracking because of accuracy concerns. She said the counter program is funded from the city’s coastal management budget and that staff will recommend that a consultant cost‑benefit analysis for the Climate Action Plan be added to a future city‑council agenda (the CAP discussion was handled later in the meeting).
