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In 2025, PUBLIC joined forces with European tech and data leader Solita with the aim to pair Solita’s world-class software engineering, data infrastructure, and AI science with PUBLIC’s expertise in transport, strategy, and public sector delivery. Since then, we’ve made big strides into the UK transport sector - and the pace is only growing.
Together, PUBLIC and Solita have been supporting transport organisations through every stage of digital transformation, including:
To-date a lot of our work has been aligned with some of the transport sector’s key digital and data priorities. We have worked with DfT to help to realise some of the commitments in the Better Connected Strategy, or in the Transport Data Action Plan. We have brought together stakeholders from government, transport operators, local authorities, technology companies, researchers and more to understand how data can be used to improve transport services and decision-making, especially for fully end-to-end integrated services across modes.
We’ve also been working at the forefront of AI and novel technologies. With RSSB we have been exploring how AI can transform their operational processes. With DfT and regional transport organisations we have been assessing how digital twin technologies can be used to deliver benefits across road, rail and freight.
To help drive our efforts, Anssi Krooks - Director, Mobility and Logistics at Solita - has joined us here full-time in London. Anssi is helping to bring best practices from transport innovation in the Nordics to the UK.
In this article, we share some of the work that we have been proud to deliver over the past year, and talk a bit about what is coming next. We describe six projects at the intersection of transport and innovation.
We’re excited to build on this over the next year.
Lots of stakeholders need regular, reliable access to transport data. Especially canonical datasets managed and hosted by DfT. But data sharing across the transport sector is often fragmented, patchy and of different quality levels. The majority of datasets cannot be accessed by open APIs, preventing real-time data movement and limiting accessibility, interoperability, and quality across DfT systems.
To help DfT with their open data strategy, PUBLIC and Solita mapped and assessed 85 DfT datasets to evaluate their value and readiness for API development. Drawing on 55 stakeholder contributions across the transport ecosystem, the team benchmarked leading public-sector API models and created five distinct user personas. These insights informed a prioritisation framework balancing user demand, data characteristics, and technical feasibility to target the highest-impact investment opportunities.
We’re excited about how this work will lay the foundations for future sector-wide transport data marketplaces, currently being explored by DfT.
At the same time, the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade (DBIST) - working with DfT - commissioned PUBLIC and Solita to look into the opportunities for ‘Smart Data’ in transport.
Smart Data is the idea behind Open Banking. Users can now ask a company that holds banking data about you to share it securely with a trusted app, which then uses it to get you a better deal or service. Open Banking now handles over a billion payments, and the government is keen to explore how a similar approach could be piloted in other sectors. PUBLIC have been exploring the case for a transport Smart Data scheme, which is more difficult. There is no single dominant player like a high-street bank, and data is spread across train operators, councils, car makers and hauliers.
We looked at use cases across rail, road and freight, from commuters finding cheaper ways, to travel, to hauliers sharing fleet data to cut fuel costs and emissions. We have used an economic modelling approach called ‘Value Chain-based Simulation Modelling’, which has allowed us to build a logic model from who holds the data, who would use it, and what each step costs and gains economically. This evidence is being used to inform decision-making about how transport data can be opened up across modes, and what roles DBIST and DfT might play.
Our work with the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) saw PUBLIC and Solita move from data strategy through to deployment and execution.
In line with DfT’s Transport Data Action Plan, we worked with the ORR to build an internal data catalogue providing a unified view of their data assets. Through research with more than 27 staff, the team defined user needs, tested governance assumptions, and shaped the operating model.
After evaluating options against key requirements, we selected and deployed a Dawiso data catalogue tool, and an MVP was configured to automatically index structural data from ORR’s Databricks database. To ensure sustainability without manual upkeep, the team created user guides and a playbook outlining the required roles, governance, and workflows.
ORR now has a practical foundation that makes data discovery and reuse easier, with a clear path to expand the catalogue to new assets and embed organisation-wide governance.
Of course, AI has been a big focus of our work as well. We have particularly explored how AI can support transport safety and security.
Central London saw roughly 2.5 million daily rail entries and exits in 2025. Keeping passengers safe at this scale relies on clear, consistent Safety-Critical Communications (SCC) across every part of the network. SCC sets the standard verbal and radio protocols used across rail operations to keep train movements and track maintenance safe. By focusing on accuracy, brevity, and clarity, clear SCC prevents high-risk misunderstandings.
To support this process PUBLIC and Solita partnered with the Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB) to explore how AI could practically improve how these communications are monitored and developed. Grounded in frontline operational needs, the team identified and prioritised potential AI use cases and built an evidence based roadmap for safer adoption. This involved assessing benefits, risks, and deployability, proposing a scalable technical architecture, and evaluating commercial, ownership, and procurement options.
Our analysis has provided the RSSB with a clear, costed and realistic roadmap for integrating AI safely into safety critical environments.
This year has seen us support the government with its digital twins agenda in the transport sector. Building on our digital evaluation expertise, PUBLIC and Solita were selected to lead the evaluation of DfT’s Integrated Transport Digital Twin programme, alongside sector partners Technopolis and Steer.
Evaluating complex digital programmes is challenging because diverse workstreams progress at different speeds, outcomes rely on adoption across multiple organisations, and DfT needs both real-time learning during delivery and robust evidence of long-term impact and value for money.
Part-way through our multi-year evaluation, the consortium has so far designed an evaluation framework covering digital twin trials, data-sharing infrastructure, crisis-response capabilities, and innovation funding to assess how technology, data, organisational capability, and collaboration combine to deliver benefits.
The evaluation is designed to give DfT a practical basis for understanding what works, for whom and under what conditions. Different workstreams are progressing at different speeds, with outcomes dependent on adoption across multiple organisations. DfT therefore needs an evaluation that can support learning during delivery while establishing credible evidence of longer-term impact and value for money.
Alongside our project work, we have been running a number of discussion forums and events focused on transport innovation. This includes a recent roundtable focused on how ‘local places’ (councils, strategic authorities, transport bodies, development corporations and more) can make better use of transport data.
Transport data remains fragmented across central and local government, leading to inefficient data use, redundant council spending, and a lack of shared digital infrastructure to support modern networks.
Our roundtable brought together senior representatives from local authorities, sub-national transport bodies, DfT, and other government departments. The session focused on best practices for structuring, maintaining, and using transport data for local planning, specifically addressing fragmented data agreements, supplier contract standards, local skill shortages, and national tool co-design.
The session delivered actionable recommendations to replace fragmented agreements with regional data networks, centrally procure core datasets, mandate data ownership standards in supplier contracts, and partner with the central government to bridge local skill gaps.
It was great to see productive, realistic and collaborative conversations taking place between central government and local authorities.
It’s been a productive and exciting past year working in transport innovation. Being able to call on technical experts with real-world, practical experience of similar initiatives in the Nordics has been very valuable for UK transport bodies. And we’re very proud of the impact of our work.
Next year, we see a lot of exciting opportunities on the horizon. Our teams are working hard on topics like devolution and the impact that will have on local transport systems; on bus franchising and new local delivery models; on digital twins across multiple modes, including freight; on autonomous vehicles and advancing regional testbeds; and of course, on AI.
If you would like to learn more about these projects or explore how we can support you in driving your transport goals, please feel free to reach out to our team to start the conversation.
