Data, Ownership, and the Silos That Stall Mobility Hubs
Ask what stops cities from building smarter mobility hubs and you'll get a neat answer – the business case, resident pushback, or internal silos. The real answer is messier: it is all of them, tangled together. Fix one and the next is waiting. At the centre of the knot sit two things nobody enjoys discussing at a conference – who owns the data, and who pays for what.
The silo problem is a money problem in disguise
Picture a new district being developed next to a major venue. In a typical city, one department handles construction, another mobility, and a third parking. Each has its own remit, budget and performance measures. To build something genuinely smart and space-efficient, they all need to align – and that is difficult before a single invoice arrives.
Because beneath the coordination problem lies a financial one. One parking facility may serve event visitors, residents and commuters, but its costs are spread across departments that each see only their own share. Who pays for the venue, who pays for operations, and who owns it? When a mobility hub is expensive to build, the returns rarely fit within any one department's budget – and even the best business case stalls if nobody can capture its value.
You do not break down silos with a PowerPoint slide. But you can make them far less obstructive by giving everyone the same trustworthy view of what is happening. That is where parking & mobility data comes in.
"We own the space, so we own the data"
There is a logic that cities are voicing more and more. As Willem van Heijningen, a strategist in the City of Amsterdam's Department of Mobility and Public Space, puts it: "We own the public space, including the parking spaces there. We also own the signage indicating where to go… To me, it is logical that we also own the parking data." He is right – and partners should support that instinct, not oppose it.
The value is not in the data itself. It is in the relationship it makes visible. Bring the sources together and you can finally see supply and demand side by side – how many people are arriving, what their needs are, and how much parking space is available.
And visitors are not interchangeable: some need an accessible bay, some arrive as a family, some arrive early, and some just in time. Match those needs to actual availability and everyone has a better journey – while the area becomes more liveable. That is what data is for here. Not dashboards. Better matches.
Ownership stays with the customer
This is where a partner needs to be disciplined about its own role. Parking data should always remain with the customer – whether that is a private parking operator or the city. Our job is not to hoard it. It is to help collect and analyse it in a standardised, secure way, then provide the tools to make sense of it.
This distinction matters more than it may sound. A city like Amsterdam is already doing the hard work – bringing together information from a dozen sources, making sense of it, and adjusting policy based on it. The last thing it needs is a lock-in that turns its own data into somebody else's asset. The right approach is the opposite: standardised, portable data, open interfaces, and analytics that lower the barrier to insight rather than raising it.
That is the thinking behind SKIDATA Connect – not another layer added to the mess, but one backbone beneath it, so on-street and off-street parking operate as a single system and clean data flows into a city's existing transit and MaaS platforms.
Linköping is the clearest proof: 18 or more car parks on SKIDATA Connect, with on-street and off-street parking operating as one system, full control over all its user data, and no third-party platform in the middle.
Florence uses the same approach at scale – 15 sites and more than 6,000 spaces managed as one, ticketless throughout, with €14.78 million in revenue in 2024.
And in Amsterdam, the same platform connects to national parking rights through Servicehuis Parkeren – with data standardised, secure and in the city's hands.
"Connected" means choosing the right partners
"Connected" is an overused word, so let us be specific. In practice, it means open interfaces, standardised data and – just as importantly – partnering with people who share the same goal. A seamless journey cannot come from one system alone; it takes several players working together towards a common aim.
So the real next step is not another platform. It is open dialogue, honest cooperation, and the courage to pilot solutions in the complexity of a real city. Break down silos by agreeing on standards and who owns what. Keep the data with the customer. Choose partners who want the same outcome. Do that and the business case, adoption and coordination all become easier – because they were never really separate problems.
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