Data as the engine of change in transport
The transport sector does not need more data, it needs better decisions, writes Annette Donnelly, Strategic Growth Manager, Fexco Managed Services.
Across a system shaped by congestion, emissions pressure, safety challenges, infrastructure constraints, and rising passenger expectations, the real differentiator is not how much information is collected but how effectively it is used. Data is what turns broad ambition into targeted, measurable action.
That shift is already visible across other sectors. In aviation, energy, logistics, and financial services, the gap between strategy and execution is increasingly closed by decision-grade intelligence: information that is timely, precise, and genuinely actionable.
Ireland today has stronger digital policy frameworks, richer public datasets, and more sophisticated operational reporting than at any previous point. The question is no longer whether the data exists. It is whether it is being used to direct investment, manage demand, improve reliability, and accelerate sustainability outcomes.
In transport, that gap between insight and action remains persistent. The sector is often strong at collecting information and reporting performance, but slower at turning insight into meaningful intervention.
If Ireland is serious about a transport system that is more sustainable, more reliable, and safer for communities, the priority is not more dashboards or additional data points, it is faster decision-making, stronger system integration, and a clear shift towards treating data as a strategic operational asset.
At Fexco, we see this challenge firsthand. Over four decades, we have developed expertise in turning complex data into actionable intelligence across payments, energy, sustainability, and aviation. That experience gives us a clear perspective on what is possible when data is applied with discipline, and what is lost when it is not.
Digital mandate
The Government’s updated Digital Ireland strategy reflects an important shift in thinking. Digital transformation and artificial intelligence are no longer standalone technology priorities; they are recognised as core enablers of competitiveness, public service delivery, and inclusion. For transport, this matters enormously.
Transport is one of the clearest examples of where digital ambition must translate into operational precision. Every journey generates data, from timetables and ticketing to traffic flow, collision records, emissions profiles, and customer feedback.
When those signals are connected, analysed, and acted upon quickly, they become a practical tool for making transport more efficient, more reliable, and more sustainable. The challenge is not a lack of information; it is the delay between measurement and intervention.
A congested corridor identified in quarterly reporting is useful, but not transformative. A reliability issue identified in near real time – quickly enough to alter scheduling, reroute services, or redesign traffic priority before the problem compounds – is where real value lies.
This is why the sector needs to move from collecting data to reducing decision latency. The most valuable information is not what is stored for future reporting; it is what changes an operational decision today.
Passenger data
The National Transport Authority’s most recent customer satisfaction findings offer an encouraging baseline. Overall satisfaction stands at 81 per cent, with 91 per cent of passengers satisfied with their most recent journey. Those are strong results, reflecting genuine public trust in the core proposition of public transport
Yet reliability remains the persistent pressure point, with satisfaction in that area at 73 per cent. The NTA links this to congestion, limited bus priority in towns and cities, and recruitment pressures.
Customers do not experience transport through strategy documents; they experience it through the predictability of the service in front of them. Improving that experience requires data that can isolate where delays are happening, why they are happening, and which interventions will have the fastest impact.
The NTA recorded 363.5 million passenger journeys across the public transport network in 2025. Growth is welcome, but it also raises the performance threshold. The challenge is no longer simply carrying more passengers; it is maintaining reliability and trust as pressure intensifies across the network.
Measuring emissions
The environmental case for data-led transport policy is equally compelling. Environmental Protection Agency reporting shows that transport emissions increased slightly in 2023 to 11.8 MtCO2eq, representing 21.5 per cent of national emissions and making transport Ireland’s largest single emissions sector.
Decarbonisation is both urgent and complex, because demand continues to rise while accessibility and economic connectivity must be maintained.
The EPA outlines a pathway in which transport emissions could fall to 9.7 MtCO2eq by 2030 under its ‘with additional measures’ scenario, supported by electric vehicle adoption, stronger biofuel blends, and reductions in vehicle kilometres travelled. Delivering those reductions will depend not only on policy ambition, but on the quality of the underlying measurement used to guide decisions.
This is where precision matters most. Broad estimates and inconsistent methodologies make it difficult to assess which interventions are genuinely reducing emissions.
Fexco’s PACE platform in aviation was built specifically to address this challenge, improving the accuracy and consistency of emissions reporting using real operational data rather than broad assumptions. The lesson for transport is direct: better measurement leads to better decisions and faster, more confident action on decarbonisation.
Safer roads
Of all the areas where data can change outcomes in transport, road safety may be the most consequential. The 190 fatalities recorded on Irish roads and public places in 2025 represent not a statistic but a failure of a system that can and should do better.
Behind every figure is a family, a community, and, in most cases, a preventable event. The ambition to eliminate road deaths entirely is the right one. Achieving it requires a level of analytical precision that Ireland’s transport system has not yet fully applied.
The Road Safety Authority has been clear and consistent in its calls for a whole-of-system response; one that combines infrastructure investment, enforcement, education, and behavioural change.
What connects all of those levers is data. Collision records, location data, speed profiles, near-miss incidents, weather conditions, road geometry, and enforcement activity, when linked and interrogated effectively, reveal patterns that are not visible in any single dataset alone. They show not just where incidents have occurred, but where they are most likely to occur next.
This is the shift that modern safety analysis makes possible: moving from reactive reporting to predictive intervention. A road safety system built on decision-grade data does not wait for a fatality to identify a dangerous junction.
It identifies the conditions the combination of road geometry, speed, traffic volume, and road user behaviour, that consistently precede serious collisions, and it acts before the next one happens.
In practice, this means moving beyond annual collision statistics toward continuous, granular monitoring of risk across the network. It means integrating data from multiple sources, An Garda Síochána enforcement records, local authority infrastructure data, RSA collision databases, telematics from commercial fleets and connected vehicles, into a single, coherent analytical picture.
It also means giving decision makers at national and local level the tools to direct limited resources to the locations and user groups where the risk is highest and the intervention potential is greatest.
Vulnerable road users – pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists – consistently account for a disproportionate share of serious and fatal collisions. Addressing that imbalance requires understanding, not just collision frequency, but the specific environmental and behavioural factors present at each location.
Data-led analysis can distinguish between a junction that is dangerous because of design, one that is dangerous because of speed, and one that is dangerous because of visibility, and that distinction determines which intervention will be most effective.
Fexco’s experience across aviation safety reporting, emissions measurement, and energy analytics has demonstrated that the same analytical discipline applies regardless of the domain.
The ability to move from broad trend data to precise, location-level insight, and to translate that insight into operational decisions, is not sector-specific. It is a capability that can be applied wherever complex datasets need to drive real-world outcomes. Road safety is precisely that kind of challenge.
The goal is a safety system in which every intervention can be evaluated, every investment can be justified by evidence, and every improvement in outcomes can be attributed to a specific action. That is not an aspirational standard, it is an achievable one, if the underlying data infrastructure is designed with that purpose in mind.
From energy to transport
Fexco’s work with the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland illustrates the broader principle. The Smart Energy Tool combines smart-meter data with Fexco’s SmartAssist AI capability to provide homeowners with clear, actionable guidance on reducing energy usage and shifting demand to off-peak periods.
Critically, the platform converts complex datasets into practical recommendations aligned with real-world decisions, it does not overwhelm users with technical detail.
That principle applies directly to transport. Whether the audience is passengers, operators, policymakers, or safety agencies, the value of data lies not in technical sophistication alone but in accessibility and usability.
Operators need insight that drives efficiency and fleet performance. Policymakers need evidence capable of directing investment and evaluating outcomes. Safety bodies need analytical tools that connect the right datasets to the right decisions at the right time. The common requirement across all of these is actionable intelligence.
“Data is what turns broad ambition into targeted, measurable action.”
What good looks like
Imagine a transport system in 2030 where safety interventions are targeted to the specific junctions, routes, and user groups that data identifies as highest risk before the next serious collision occurs.
Where every bus operator, local authority, and freight company can see in near real time the emissions impact of every route decision. Where passengers trust the timetable because reliability data drives rostering, bus priority, and operational planning.
That is the system data can help deliver. One where congestion is treated as a measurable network challenge, emissions are tracked at decision-grade precision, road safety is managed predictively rather than retrospectively, and service reliability is continuously improved rather than periodically reviewed. Public investment would be judged not by how much data is collected, but by how quickly that data changes outcomes.
The case for action
The next step is not more reporting, it is better integration between transport systems, shared data standards, and faster translation of insight into operational action. Establishing a clear national framework for transport-data compatibility would enable congestion, safety, service-performance, and emissions data to operate within a connected, coherent decision-making system.
That would allow transport agencies, safety bodies and operators to identify emerging risks earlier, target investment more precisely, improve reliability faster, and measure the real-world impact of interventions with greater confidence. In an increasingly constrained fiscal and climate environment, that level of operational precision is becoming essential rather than aspirational.
Fexco is already applying precision measurement and decision-intelligence approaches in aviation, energy, and sustainability. The same discipline connecting complex data to clear, actionable outcomes is directly transferable to transport, and to the challenge of making Irish roads safer for every user.
The case for action is already in the data. The question is no longer what to do, but how quickly it can be done.
