Doh, missed that!
The methodology:
A single plot beacon (two plots tall to make sure it’s a part of settlement), 10k prestige by itself, by a character that only has this beacon in the settlement. The settlement is a hamlet. So, beacon should generate 30c per character once per cooldown period.
Once a day the beacon owner checks the footfall, then Test Character A (different account, has a beacon in the settlement) crosses that beacon, beacon owner then verifies if footfall changed (so far in the past seven days, only once).
Then test character B (no permissions or beacons on the settlement, same account as Test Character A) steps into the beacon. Owner checks footfall again. So far in the past seven days, this character generated footfall twice.
Edit: Test has been going since last tuesday, which was the first time in the past seven days that had footfall generated by both test characters. Second character generated footfall again thursday, and nothing since.
I’ll keep testing daily in the hopes of figuring out the ‘new’ cooldown, assuming that it’s predictable instead of random. Maybe it’s once a week now. 
Edit 2: Further clarification, both test characters are not in the friends list of the beacon owner, or of any character in that same account. It’s doubtful that this would have an impact, but they were removed from friends list before the test beacon was setup, just to be double sure. It’s always good practice to eliminate variables when doing science. 
The removal was mutual: no characters from either account have any characters from the other account in their friends list.
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rules on footfall (code):
footfall is per mayor per settlement, and the character giving footfall must not have permissions to edit the beacon that they first walk into for that mayor in that settlement.
aka if char A has permissions on char B’s beacon in settlement X, char A will not generate footfall for char B in that settlement even if char B has “another” beacon in the same settlement that char A does “not” have permissions on, because char A walked into the beacon that they do have permissions on first.
there is then some operations involving when the owner of “that” beacon last visited it that reduce the payment amount.
perhaps that is the problem, there is a beacon that “would” generate footfall because the mayor has been visiting it constantly… but all the characters are first going through a different beacon that mayor owns first in the settlement that the mayor has not visited in a long time and so gets little to no footfall even if they do then wander over to the “main” beacon of that mayor.
as I say, none of the code here, nor the configuration values has changed in quite a long time, even in the local development version of the server.
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This is very good to hear directly from a developer. We need more direct answers like that. Thanks, Luca. 
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Well, in my testing I made a single isolated beacon using one of my alts that never had any other beacons in my settlement. This beacon is also walled on all sides except for a door.
The question here appears to be the: when does a visit ‘count’ for the purposes of generating footfall? If it’s supposed to be more than once in seven days per character, then it is likely that some bug was introduced in recent patches.
My working hypothesis is that (assuming the ‘cooldown’ between footfall-generating visits is 48 hours and not 24 hours), then each time the test characters are stepping in daily to test if they’re over this cooldown period yet, the clock is resetting to 48 hours.
All test-visits have been over 24 hours apart (usually 24 hours 30 minutes, give or take). One test character (that has another beacon in the area) generated footfall only immediately after the patch on tuesday, and the second test character (that has no permissions anywhere on the settlement, nor any beacons) generated footfall immediately after the patch, then again two days after that, and then never again so far.
Another possibility is that the code that recognizes if the character has permissions or not is bugged in such a way that if a character has a beacon elsewhere in the settlement, then that character is not triggering footfall generation anywhere else in that settlement, as if every beacon was their own.
The whole thing was set up to understand exactly how much time had to pass before the same character would generate footfall again (since people in the forums would say either 24 or 48 hours).
For the last two weeks at least (that was when the test beacon and methodology was originally set up), it has been significantly longer than 48 hours, and in fact the only thing that seemed to trigger footfall generation to count again for the test characters was the server being reset for last tuesday’s patch.
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the time is 24 hour.
as I say, the footfall is per-mayor per-settlement. not per-beacon per-settlement.
if player A has two beacons X and Y in the same settlement S, and player B has permissions on X but not on Y, then whether player B generates footfall for player A depends on which beacon he enters first basicly.
assume player B hasnt played in over a day so definitely no cooldowns are applicable, and player B enters beacon X, it will not provide footfall for player A (permissions fail) but 24hr cooldown will still begin for the (player B, player A, settlement S) tuple, so even if player B walks over to beacon Y now, he will not generate footfall for player A even if he has no permissions, because the cooldown is still in effect.
if player B had first walked into beacon Y instead, then he would have generated footfall for player A
–
the bug I would say, is actually that player B can generate footfall “at all” (by walking into beacon Y first) since player B does have permissions on a beacon owned by player A in the settlement, just not the one he happens to have walked into first.
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Alright, then let’s clarify that mayor part:
If I have two characters in my account (let’s call 'em Bill and Bob) and each has their own beacon in my settlement, does that mean that only Bill or Bob can get footfall when some random person walks thru my settlement?
Now for the practical terms of my testing: Its an underground area, my crafter character owns the main beacon (and is also warden at the moment) but my forge character created the beacon I’m using to test, off one of the hallways in my base.
I’m having a friend walk into my forge-alt beacon with two characters once every 24 hours + a few minutes while I’m logged in my forge character, checking the forge character’s beacon as they do so. I suppose if the footfall triggers for any beacon in my account, rather than on a per-character basis, then my friend might be giving footfall to my crafter’s beacon instead of my forger’s.
The friend has no permissions in either of my beacons, but one of their two characters has their own beacon elsewhere in the settlement.
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it is all character based, not account based, you can generate footfall in your alt’s beacons if they have no permissions (again, feels weird to me that you can…)
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Then I’m confident that it’s broken.
Of course, you should set up your own in house testing to confirm, rather than taking my word for it, but I’m 100% sure that one of my friends characters generated footfall in my test beacon only once, immediately after tuesday’s patch, and never again since, and by your own account it should be every 24 hours, so it’s absolutely not working as it should.
I’m absolutely positive that there are no permission conflicts and no other beacons belonging to my forge character anywhere else in the settlement. 
I’d be happy to PM you coordinates for my settlement if you’d rather confirm that in game before investigating further.
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LOL.
Well I think I see the problem 
the code goes: “… + BeaconSettings.footfallDelayHours * HoursToSeconds < timeNow”
and guess what HoursToSeconds is?
"static const double HoursToSeconds = 24.0 * 60.0 * 60.0; "
… eh… that looks like it should be called “DaysToSeconds” …
so… the config values says 24hr… but the code makes it into 24 days.
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Oh man >< the number of times I’ve made silly mistakes like that…
Sounds like an easy fix!
Aside: thanks for the candid back and forth here, @lucadeltodecso, and digging into the logic - it’s really great to see it!
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So… I was right and footfall has been broken/nerfed accidently?
No, because it’s been like this since first ever implemented
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Oh. But am I right? 
If this behavior (code/configuration) has been the same since initial implementation, something else must be causing the drop in footfall income.
Well it appeared during the last patch. So something in the patch changed footfall.
Yeah, potentially. Could also be explained by player behavior, though. And the 24 day cooldown bug luca found may explain that
Theory: the same set of players uses your road, and the number of unique players (in that 24d window) has plateaued out
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That does seem to be a bit of it. Still think there is something else. Cause it magically happened all at once right after a patch. Putting the puzzle together would be leaning towards a patch issue.
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Wouldnt there be logs on the beacon that could confirm that?
But more importantly, i thought i was being clever setting up a hub with 4 beacons from seperate alts in a square in middle… thinking 4 times the footfall. They all share permissions… did i just make it so i have to go to 4 seperate places to collect the same amount i would be getting with 1?
No. The way I understand it, each character counts differently for the footfall. Since it’s based on character and not account.