Coalition urges protection of public transport authorities' and operators' right to access their own operational data
POLIS, together with five other European organisations, has signed a joint statement calling on the European Parliament to safeguard public transport authorities' and operators' right to access their own data.
Currently, under the EU Data Act (Regulation (EU) 2023/2854), operators have the right to access the operational data generated by their connected vehicles, which provide information on battery health, energy consumption, fault codes, and much more. These data are crucial for predictive maintenance, cleaner fleets, and smarter energy use.
However, the Digital Omnibus now under discussion will determine whether this right can be enforced in practice or undermined. The coalition—composed of UITP Europe, EMTA, Eurocities, IRU, SGI Europe, and POLIS—therefore warns against weakening these rights through the reclassification of 'derived data', cloud-only access, and broad trade-secret refusals.
Data are essential for operators
Connected vehicles generate a continuous flow of operational data that public transport operators and authorities can use to modernise the fleet. The Data Act was designed to unlock this potential by giving operators the right to access data generated by the connected products they use.
These data are essential for operating electric and hydrogen fleets, as they provide fundamental information for:
- predictive maintenance, allowing for reduced maintenance costs;
- battery lifecycle management, which is an increasingly important issue considering the cost of a traction battery for an electric bus and the scarcity of critical raw materials;
- energy optimisation that contributes to achieving the climate targets.
For the Digital Ominibus to support Europe’s leadership on fair and effective access to connected product data, it must tackle three issues:
- reclassification as 'derived data', which is a loophole that allows manufacturers to restrict access;
- cloud-only access and proprietary platforms, which create structural dependencies on competitors' infrastructure;
- trade secrets as a blanket refusal, which allows manufacturers to block access to operational parameters.
Laying the foundation for the next generation of fleet management
Given the importance of accessing operational data for transport operators, the coalition therefore urges the European Parliament to maintain the established legal framework and strengthen it by:
- prevent manufacturers from reclassifying operational sensor readings by clearly defining raw data;
- maintain trade secrets safeguards and reject the widening of refusal grounds;
- grant operators direct, in-vehicle, machine-readable access to operational data and historical data;
- no sectoral exclusions, maintaining batteries, control systems, and embedded architectures in scope;
- binding sectoral guidance building on the Commission’s Guidance on vehicle data of 12 September 2025.
It is now the time for Europe to weaken the framework it had pioneered. The coalition therefore asks to protect direct, in-vehicle access, as well as historical data, keep operational parameters in scope, and make the European Commission's September 2025 guidance into binding sectoral rules for public transport and rail.
Read the joint statement here.
