The Quiet Data Revolution
The EU is pushing hard to transform its urban mobility data landscape
Videos of autonomous taxis driving around San Francisco have been popping up in my social media feeds lately. The future is here, dear commuters!
But this is not the only major shift in urban mobility. There is another one coming, not from SF, but the equally cloudy and yet, not-so-cool, or so they say, Brussels.
By 2027, every EU city over 100k inhabitants must measure mobility the same way. Many companies will also need to release critical mobility data, in real time.
With these mandates, the EU has decided to leave its old approach of issuing recommendations and piloting programs in the rear-view mirror.
A quiet data revolution is coming to Europe… and yet few people seem to be paying attention.
No more timid tinkering with side-effects
Back in the 1990s, the EU’s mobility policies were few and mostly focused on tackling specific problems like congestion, accidents, and pollution. Over the last decade, however, there has been a profound shift in approach.
The New EU Urban Mobility Framework released in December 2021 seeks to promote a safe, accessible, inclusive, affordable, smart, resilient, and zero-emission urban mobility. Those are many words. But the change in philosophy can be summarized as:
“EU mobility policy is no longer about managing side effects, but about transforming how people move in cities.”
How?
Well, to start with, the EU has changed tactics. Hard-law data mandates are replacing recommendations and voluntary pilots. Two key regulations - the backbone of the EU’s new mobility policy - exemplify this move. They are lengthy and cover many topics, so I’ll focus on those aspects specifically targeting urban mobility data.
First, the revised Trans-European Transport Network or TEN-T Regulation, which entered into force in 2024, mandates 431 cities over 100K inhabitants to adopt Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs) by the end of 2027. As part of this obligation, city governments must collect data on a series of indicators to monitor the implementation of SUMPs.
The second is the New Directive on Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS), which seeks to make intelligent transport systems1 a critical infrastructure across Europe. This new regulation pushes companies to design products that are secure, standardised, and transparent by default, and obliges both public and private actors to release some of this data.
Will this affect the urban mobility data landscape?
Spoiler alert: yes, a great deal.
TEN-T’s article 41 mandates cities to monitor several aspects of urban mobility. Measuring these indicators will require data from public and private entities to oversee the sustainability, safety, and accessibility of urban mobility. While the European Commission is still deciding on the final list of indicators, which shall be made no later than July 19 of this year, here you can find those that have been discussed to date. I found some of these indicators particularly interesting, as I’m quite certain that many of those 431 cities don’t currently have access to this information:
Distance travelled per mobility mode for all available modes.
Travel times by all available modes to major transport hubs within the functional urban area and the variability of such travel times.
Total fleet size of free-floating and station-based shared mobility services.
Number of passengers-km on public transport.
The new ITS Directive, in turn, extends the data sharing obligation beyond cities. Both public and private entities will need to share quite a bit of data on four domains: real-time traffic (road infrastructure and usage), multimodal travel (timetables, fares, departures and bookings), safety (safety events within three minutes) and truck-parking (facilities and live space occupancy). The novelty of the regulation lies not only on the amount of data, but on its frequency. Much of this data will need to be made available in real time.
All this is A LOT of information, but the EU has made clear that mobility data is a critical resource, and is ready to step on the pedal.
High expectations demand equal investments
The EU’s initiative is, on balance, good news. The proliferation of data on urban mobility creates opportunities for more data-informed policies and decisions. Comparable indicators will allow benchmarking across European cities. Making public and proprietary data available can also provide opportunities for new businesses, analytic services, and innovative tools and products.
All good, but many challenges remain.
Delivering real-time data will require the roll out of sensors, the hiring of hundreds of engineers, investment in data storage and compute, and the development of cyber-secure APIs. In other words, if not accompanied by substantial investment in public capacities, these regulations will remain impracticable, or even worse, create huge disparities between capable and non-capable cities.
There are also high costs for companies, particularly small ones needing to adapt their systems and platforms to meet new requirements. Smaller map-makers, mobility and parking operators may also lose their competitive edge if their proprietary data moats are lost when sharing “enriched” data.
All this is expensive, but the costs of inaction can be even higher: congestion costs the EU economy over €100 billion annually, urban areas account for 23% of transport CO2 emissions, and traffic remains a primary source of air pollution responsible for over 200,000 premature annual deaths across the continent.
Cities should take note: the social benefits and positive spillovers of sustainable mobility outweigh its costs. But while those cities that collaborate with companies and invest in data capacity early can steer urban mobility on their own terms, the slower adopters will lag behind.
The quiet revolution looks like a race—one that cities should get ready for, now.
Systems in which information and communication technologies are applied in the field of road transport, traffic-management and mobility-management.