This handbook looks at the relation between the possible ways in which a mobility data platform for mobility can be realised and the governance environment of the data platform. This means we have two questions. On the one hand, how to design governance conducive to the idea and the potential of a mobility data platform? On the other hand, what governance environment will support what kind of mobility data platform?
The implementation of a mobility data platform will not start in a void. Existing stakeholders, mostly expected to be metropolitan authorities focussing on mobility, have to embrace the idea to start a decision-making process that includes decisions on funding, technology, and organisation. Those decisions are conditioned by existing institutions, internal and external rules: from the budgeting process of the metropolitan authority to national privacy laws.
In our perspective, this is the fabric that ties a great variety of actors together. From technology providers, through local politicians, to visitors of the metropolitan area, and many more. To make the mobility platform work, those actors will have to be connected in new ways, given the existing institutions and maybe dependent on new institutions. The actions connecting these stakeholders going beyond the existing institutions is what we call governance and this is about organising for and deciding on all aspects of the mobility data platform in a context with many different actors.
The platform depends highly on the contributions of all these actors. If data providers don’t provide data, the government doesn’t fund the platform, travellers don’t use the services coming from the platform, the platform creates no value. Governance consists of building that organisational and institutional environment that delivers an attractive mobility platform for all those (potentially) involved in the platform. It is a two-way street, understanding the stakeholders position towards the platform to align the technology of the platform accordingly, and looking for incentives for the stakeholders to change position conducive to the potential of the technology of the platform.
At the same time, the world has many different metropolitan areas, with different institutions, different mobility patterns and policies, different cultures, different economies. This means there is no single optimal way of implementing a mobility data platform with a specific governance. As a consequence, this handbook provides not a single optimal way, but a great deal of lessons drawn on the relation between context, data platforms and governance, as we have discovered in the three demonstrators and the 12 cases.
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