Transport is one of the UK’s most data-rich sectors. Every day, data is generated by vehicles, infrastructure, operators, logistics networks, ticketing systems, charge points, journey planning tools and the people using transport services.

The opportunity is clear: used well, this data could help people make better travel choices, support businesses to operate more efficiently, and enable public bodies to plan and manage transport systems with greater confidence.

The challenge is that transport data is often fragmented across organisations, modes and systems. It can be difficult to access, difficult to combine, and difficult to use consistently. That limits its value for passengers, freight operators, local authorities, innovators and policymakers.

Innovate UK Business Connect recently led stakeholder engagement work, commissioned by the Department for Business and Trade and the Department for Transport, to explore where Smart Data could unlock value in the transport sector. The work brought together representatives from across road, rail, freight, logistics, technology, local government and wider transport innovation communities to identify practical use cases and the barriers that would need to be addressed.

The published report, Exploring Smart Data opportunities in the transport sector, identifies 12 use cases across areas including real-time multimodal journey planning, integrated ticketing, EV charging and pricing, freight emissions reporting, last mile logistics, intermodal capacity optimisation and infrastructure planning.

A consistent message emerged from the work: the issue is not simply the absence of data. In many cases, the data already exists. The harder challenge is interoperability, governance, trust, incentives and capability. Different organisations hold different parts of the picture, often under different commercial, technical and regulatory conditions.

Smart Data offers one possible route to address this. By enabling secure, consent-based and standardised data sharing, it could help create the conditions for new services, improved market transparency and better decision-making across the transport system.

For Innovate UK Business Connect, this work reflects the role we play across the innovation ecosystem: convening the right people, translating policy questions into practical industry engagement, and surfacing evidence that can inform future decisions.

The next step is to build on this evidence base. The transport sector now has an opportunity to move from fragmented data discussions towards more targeted, outcome-led use cases that can support better journeys, stronger businesses and a more integrated transport system.