Europe’s Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) landscape is inherently complex. It spans infrastructure operators, service providers, public authorities, researchers, automotive manufacturers and suppliers, telecom and IT actors, and users, each operating with different priorities, timelines, and constraints. Capturing this complexity in a meaningful way requires a structured, multi-sector lens that goes beyond a traditional market study.
This is the rationale behind the ITS Market Radar series developed by ERTICO – ITS Europe in collaboration with EY. Across three editions published in 2024, 2025 and 2026, the Radar applies a consistent framework to different groups within ERTICO’s eight-sector partnership, producing a set of distinct but complementary insights into how intelligent mobility is evolving.
Each report follows a common structure covering sectoral transition, key trends and innovation, users, sectoral figures, employment, challenges, and partnerships. The reports are based on a combination of survey data from ERTICO Partners, qualitative stakeholder interviews, and sector-specific data analysis. This approach allows for comparability across sectors while preserving the specificity of each domain.
The three reports together offer a multi-perspective snapshot of ITS as an interconnected ecosystem, where different parts of the market are advancing simultaneously but not always in sync.
The integrators: Traffic & transport industry and service providers
The 2024 Radar focuses on the Traffic & Transport Industry and Service Providers, providing insight into a part of the operational backbone of ITS. It reveals a sector where technological capability is advancing rapidly, but structural limitations continue to constrain large-scale impact.
AI-driven traffic management, 5G-enabled connectivity and digital twins are bolstering traffic optimisation, connected mobility and Mobility-as-a-Service ecosystems. This technological momentum is reflected in market expectations. Over 65% of the organisations surveyed across both sectors anticipate revenue growth over the next three to five years, with 33% of the Traffic & Transport Industry and 44% of the Service Providers anticipating significant increases.
The economic reality is somewhat uneven. A significant proportion of organisations operate with annual ITS budgets below €1 million. Overall R&D budgets, for the most part, are below 0.5 million, although for the Traffic and Transport sector, this can range up to 10 million. National and EU grant funding amounts to less than 0.5 million for the vast majority. Limited financial capacity could signal reliance on public funding mechanisms, resulting in a proliferation of pilot projects that often struggle to scale into sustainable business models.
The labour market presents an even more acute challenge. The report finds that all surveyed organisations report difficulties filling roles, highlighting a systemic shortage of talent with combined expertise in digital technologies and transport systems. Among the Transport and Traffic Industry, 83% said that it was extremely difficult to fill open positions. As ITS becomes more data-driven, this skills gap is likely to intensify.
The service focus of over two-thirds of the Transport and Traffic Partners is B2G, while over half the Service Providers focus mainly on B2B. From a user's perspective, the impact of ITS may be seen as largely indirect. While systems improve efficiency and safety, public awareness of ITS solutions is still relatively low, limiting demand-driven adoption. Combined with interoperability challenges and fragmented stakeholder coordination, these sectors illustrate a key tension: innovation is strong, but integration remains incomplete.
Governance, research and the reality of adoption
The 2025 Radar shifts attention to Public Authorities, Research, and Users, offering a perspective rooted in governance, policy, and societal uptake. This segment highlights the conditions under which ITS innovation can or cannot translate into real-world impact.
Public authorities increasingly rely on ITS to meet policy objectives related to congestion reduction, road safety, and decarbonisation. However, they operate under significant budgetary constraints and complex regulatory environments, which limit their ability to invest at the scale required. Less than ¼ of the public authorities surveyed received between 1 and 10 million euros of public funding from EU programmes, with the rest receiving less than 1 million.
The research sector continues to generate innovation, particularly in AI, automation, and connectivity, but faces persistent challenges in bridging the gap between development and deployment. Issues such as funding continuity, access to data, and lack of standardisation hinder the transition from research outputs to market-ready solutions. The vast majority of the Partners receive between 0.5 and 5 million in funding from EU programmes. Both sectors highlighted funding and budget constraints to be the primary challenge.
The inclusion of users brings a critical dimension into focus. Despite the availability of advanced technologies, awareness, trust, and willingness to adopt ITS solutions remain uneven. Concerns around data privacy and automation persist, and behavioural inertia slows the uptake of new mobility services. This highlights a fundamental disconnect between technical readiness and societal acceptance.
Employment trends reinforce this complexity. Demand for skills in data analytics, cybersecurity, and AI continues to grow, yet public sector organisations face difficulties attracting talent in competition with private industry. This creates capacity gaps in precisely those institutions responsible for coordinating and regulating ITS deployment. Over a third of the research and public authorities report significant or extreme difficulties in filling open positions with skilled employees.
Across all three groups, collaboration emerges as both a necessity and a challenge. While EU funding programmes such as Horizon Europe play a critical role, the report underscores that project-based partnerships are not sufficient. More integrated, long-term collaboration models are required to align policy, innovation, and market deployment.
Industrial convergence: automotive, supply and connectivity
The 2026 Radar focuses on Suppliers, Vehicle Manufacturers, and Connectivity Providers, capturing the industrial dimension of ITS and its increasing convergence with digital infrastructure.
A defining trend in this segment is the integration of automotive and telecommunications ecosystems. Connected vehicles, supported by 5G and emerging V2X technologies, are becoming central components of a broader mobility network. At the same time, companies are shifting from hardware-centric models to software-defined and data-driven services, reflecting a broader transformation in the automotive industry.
This convergence is reshaping market dynamics. Investment is increasingly directed toward data platforms, connectivity infrastructure, and integrated service offerings, with revenue models evolving accordingly. Users benefit more directly at this level, experiencing seamless, real-time, and multimodal mobility services, although expectations around reliability and data privacy are rising in parallel.
The labour market mirrors this transformation. Demand is growing for expertise in software engineering, telecommunications, and AI, as traditional roles in manufacturing and engineering evolve into digital ones. Competition for talent is intensifying across sectors, further highlighting the strategic importance of skills development.
Despite strong growth potential, key challenges remain. Interoperability across systems and borders, alignment of business models, and questions around data ownership and governance continue to complicate large-scale deployment. However, unlike earlier segments, collaboration here is increasingly taking the form of strategic, cross-industry alliances, signalling a move toward ecosystem-level integration.
From Sector Insights to System-Level Transformation
Taken together, the three ITS Market Radar reports provide a comprehensive view of Europe’s intelligent mobility landscape as a set of interdependent sectoral realities. Each segment highlights a different dimension of the same challenge: how to move from fragmented innovation to a coherent, scalable mobility system.
A central insight emerging across all sectors is the growing importance of data as the backbone of mobility. Whether in traffic management, public policy, or connected vehicles, data enables the coordination of increasingly complex systems. However, it also introduces new challenges related to governance, privacy, and value distribution.
Looking ahead, the future of ITS will depend less on individual technological breakthroughs and more on the ability to orchestrate collaboration at scale. This includes:
• Developing common standards and interoperable systems
• Establishing clear data governance frameworks
• Addressing critical skills shortages
• Building user trust and awareness
The ITS Market Radar reports map the market and highlight where alignment is needed. It is clear that the next phase of intelligent mobility will be defined by the successful integration of an increasingly complex ecosystem.
These reports reinforce the role of cross-sector integrators such as the ERTICO Partnership. Bringing together stakeholders from across the value chain is essential for addressing the structural challenges identified in the reports, particularly around interoperability, collaboration, and alignment of incentives.
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