A Platform for Anonymised Mobility Data in Secondary Cities

Secondary cities are where transport growth can become either more connected or more congested. Fast-expanding centres such as Gold Coast, Geelong, Newcastle and Wollongong must accommodate new residents while improving buses, cycling and walking on tight budgets. Traditional planning often relies on passenger counts, surveys and operator reports that reveal where people travelled, but not how journeys connected across a wider network.

A platform for sharing anonymised mobility data could give planners a clearer picture of travel demand without exposing individual identities. ICTD-ASP, jointly launched by the Asian Development Bank and the International Telecommunication Union, could connect government agencies, transport operators, technology providers and civil society around common evidence, standards and safeguards. The result would be a practical foundation for planning public transport that reflects how people actually move.

Why secondary cities need better travel evidence

Australian travel is shaped by dispersed suburbs, long commutes and strong dependence on private vehicles. Public transport use also varies by time and purpose: weekday commuting, school travel, shopping, health appointments and weekend recreation produce different demand patterns. In Perth, Adelaide and Brisbane, records generated by SmartRider, Myki and Go Card systems already offer useful signals, yet planners may struggle to compare them with bus operations, event crowds and emerging mobility services.

Fragmented evidence makes it harder to identify missed connections. A crowded route may appear healthy until passengers are shown transferring to a poorly timed service several kilometres away. Frequent complaints can identify problems, but they cannot show whether demand is rising across an entire corridor or concentrated around a particular employment centre.

Secondary cities need an evidence base that can be updated regularly and interpreted consistently. That would help planners identify overloaded segments, gaps in frequency, weak first-and-last-mile links and opportunities for integrated fares or timed transfers. It would also create a stronger starting point when deciding whether investment should favour additional vehicles, bus priority, interchanges or active-transport improvements.

Turning movement records into planning intelligence

The platform would combine data already held by transport authorities and operators, including automated vehicle location records, service timetables, fare-card taps and passenger counts. With appropriate permissions, aggregated mobile location data and information from taxi, rideshare and shared-mobility operators could add context. Commuting patterns, dwell times, transfer volumes and journey lengths would be more useful than simple totals of boardings.

Rather than publishing raw datasets, the platform would produce analysis for defined planning areas. Visual tools could map origin–destination flows, peak crowding, unreliable connections and areas where residents travel long distances to reach essential services. Planners could compare service scenarios before committing to route or timetable changes, reducing reliance on costly trial-and-error.

Common technical standards would be essential. General Transit Feed Specification data, consistent geographic boundaries and agreed definitions for a “trip,” “transfer” or “service hour” would make cities comparable while still allowing local priorities to guide decisions. Local universities, transport advocates and community groups could also examine the findings and flag assumptions that official datasets miss.

Privacy must be designed into the platform

Anonymisation alone does not make data harmless. Small groups, unusual travel times or combinations of attributes can make individuals identifiable, particularly when datasets are linked. The platform should therefore use aggregation thresholds, remove unnecessary location precision, restrict access by role and establish short, purpose-specific retention periods. Differential privacy techniques could provide additional protection for published statistics.

Australia’s legal environment requires careful navigation. Private-sector handling may be governed by the Privacy Act 1988 and the Australian Privacy Principles, while government agencies must comply with applicable state and territory privacy, records and data-sharing requirements. The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner’s guidance can serve as a useful benchmark, but each participating city should confirm its own legal obligations, including rules applying to data sourced from other jurisdictions.

Trust would also depend on visible governance. Participants should know why each dataset is collected, who can use it, how long it is retained and whether it could be used for commercial or enforcement purposes. Independent audits, public methods, security controls and a prohibition on re-identification attempts would make the platform credible. Clear complaint and review processes would give passengers a voice without requiring their identities to enter the analytical environment.

Converting evidence into investable transport projects

Better information becomes useful when it supports a funding decision. A city might use shared demand data to justify evening bus frequency, a mobility hub or bus-priority infrastructure on a congested corridor. The same evidence can strengthen business cases presented to national and state infrastructure programmes, helping decision-makers compare investments in public transport with the social and economic effects of continued car dependence.

ICTD-ASP could provide a neutral forum for governments, private operators, development partners and civil society. Operators could identify practical data gaps, technology firms could offer interoperable tools and civic groups could test whether the analysis reflects community needs. This arrangement also supports local capability rather than creating a dependency on a single proprietary platform.

A sustainable model should fund routine maintenance of data pipelines and analytical tools, not only a short pilot. Procurement could reward open interfaces, portability and reusable datasets, while common performance measures would make operators accountable for reliability, accessibility and passenger outcomes. Cities should retain control of their aggregated data and be able to move it between approved suppliers when contracts end.

A practical path from pilot to lasting value

A pilot could begin with one corridor where transport demand is poorly understood. Participating agencies would establish a baseline, connect selected datasets and publish a small set of planning products. Passenger privacy would be assessed before access, and city staff would test whether the resulting maps and forecasts changed a real planning decision.

Scale-up should depend on evidence. Useful indicators include time spent obtaining and reconciling data, the number of projects using the platform, improved transfer reliability and changes in service or investment decisions. Financial value matters too, but cheaper analysis alone is insufficient if the evidence does not alter how transport is planned.

Planning need	Fragmented evidence	Shared anonymised data platform
Route planning	Separate counts from individual operators	Comparable origin–destination and passenger-flow patterns
Service frequency	Anecdotal reports of overcrowding	Evidence across peak, off-peak and event travel
Accessible travel	Problems mainly visible through complaints	Corridors with weak access, transfers or waiting times
Investment priorities	Demand forecasts that are difficult to validate	Repeatable indicators for comparing proposed projects
Performance monitoring	Inconsistent operator measures	Shared measures for reliability, frequency and coverage

The lasting lesson is that better public transport planning does not require surveillance of individual passengers. It requires responsible sharing of aggregated movement evidence, common standards and durable collaboration among the institutions that shape a city’s transport network.