GO-Mobility

Looking beyond borders:

the integrated mobility data space

Spain’s new Sustainable Mobility Law represents a significant step forward in the collection and integration of data as the core of mobility and transport planning and management. Through the creation of the Integrated Mobility Data Space (EDIM), the law aims to improve the efficiency and accessibility of transport services, promoting sustainable mobility solutions. Can we learn anything from this? Let’s find out in this month’s article, which analyzes the founding pillars of the law and the EDIM.

Mobility data management: the three pillars

The Spanish Council of Ministers recently approved the draft Sustainable Mobility Law (LMS), which is now being debated in parliament through an accelerated process. The new law is important because it addresses the role of data in the mobility ecosystem for the first time, introducing three key concepts on the country’s mobility data management:

• The Integrated Mobility Data Space (EDIM) as a common tool,
• The regulation of data sharing mechanisms in the sector
• The generation of new use cases for mobility data, linked to the development of evidence-based public transport policies.

The future law will provide the regulatory framework that will enable administrations to better respond to the mobility and transport needs of citizens and the challenges of the 21st century: sustainability, digitalization, and social and territorial cohesion.

The law introduces numerous innovations: new planning tools, public transport financing mechanisms, and testing environments for mobility innovations. But that’s not all: in addition to these issues, the LMS also addresses the growing role of data in the context of mobility, bringing it to the forefront of public debate.

Thanks to the new features introduced, the law will regulate innovative solutions such as on-demand transport, shared mobility, temporary use of vehicles, and the regulation of autonomous vehicles, and will promote digitization and open data by administrations, infrastructure managers, and public and private operators. Digitizing and sharing data will, among other things, help open up new business opportunities and improve decision-making.

Building the tool: the Integrated Mobility Data Space (EDIM)

The Sustainable Mobility Act provides for the creation of the Integrated Mobility Data Space (EDIM), a tool for collecting up-to-date information on transport supply and demand. This digital tool aims to bring together in a single portal all information relating to passenger mobility and freight transport, from a multimodal perspective and covering both urban and interurban dimensions.

Article 14 specifies that the EDIM will incorporate:

• Supply and demand data for all modes of transport, particularly public transport services;
• Information on the financial situation and costs of providing public transport;
• Statistics on investments in this area;
• An inventory of infrastructure and transport terminals.

Feeding the EDIM: sharing mobility data

Data providers are an essential element in the ecosystem that makes up the EDIM: without their active participation, it risks becoming an empty container. In addition to the collaboration of public entities operating urban transport services, the participation of private operators, both in urban and interurban transport, is necessary to contribute to feeding the EDIM.

EDIM also opens the door to the refinement of data fusion methodologies to get the most out of different data sources, an area in which GO-Mobility is investing more and more.

Image taken from the report “El potencial de los espacios de datos de movilidad” by EIT Urban Mobility

Using EDIM: evidence-based transport planning

Taking a small step back: European Directive 2010/40 on Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) provided for the creation of National Access Points (NAPs) in each Member State, with the specific aim of increasing the availability of open data sets in the mobility and transport sector. NAPs are already implemented in most Member States, and work is underway to make more and more datasets available to the public through them.

While NAPs were set up with the aim of facilitating the consultation of data and enabling its dissemination through a single portal to facilitate the development of services for citizens, EDIM was created with the aim of facilitating the design of evidence-based public transport policies.

According to the approach with which it was conceived, and citing Article 13.2 of the LMS, EDIM must become a tool that facilitates mobility management, improving the design of sustainable and efficient mobility solutions through better dialogue between mobility actors and providing the transparency necessary for the design of public policies on transport and mobility.

Towards mobility as a social right

The Sustainable Mobility Law aims to give concrete form to what is recognized for the first time in Spain as a social right: the LMS will recognize mobility as a right of all citizens, as well as an element of social cohesion that contributes to the improvement of the welfare state. According to the law, mobility must be universally accessible and inclusive: to this end, administrations are provided with the tools to work in coordination with various public and private actors and offer solutions suitable for all, in order to guarantee this right across the board to all citizens and in different geographical areas, including rural areas.