The Demand Side Has Spoken

What an intermodal corridor asked for, in its own words

For several years, the case for federated data sharing in transport has been made from the infrastructure side — by researchers, by public bodies, by the communities building trusted data infrastructures. The argument has been patient and principled: coordination across a transport chain requires primary data, shared under the control of those who generate it, without surrendering it to a central owner.

On 27 August, at the TT-Line Intermodal Conference at Maryhill Estate in southern Sweden, something quietly significant happened. More than one hundred leaders from across the intermodal transport system — ferry and short-sea operators, rail undertakings, road hauliers, ports and terminals, freight forwarders and infrastructure owners — were asked what was needed to make intermodal transport work better. Their input was captured live from the room. And when the themes were surfaced, they were not about technology. They were about coordination.

The room asked for cooperation within intermodal transport, and for interfaces that make partnerships workable. It asked for the ability to subscribe to data as an intermodal customer — to receive the data each actor needs, at the right time, in the form they need it. It asked for transparency of data and of transport. It named the lack of standards. It reached for the phrase "digital ecosystem". And it anchored all of it in the commercial test that ultimately decides adoption: making intermodal transport more competitive, reliable and easier to buy.

Read as a list, these are familiar conference themes. Read together, they are something else: a specification.

What those requirements imply

Consider what is being asked for. Interfaces for partnership — but among actors who compete as often as they cooperate, making it difficult for any one actor to own the interface on which everyone else depends. Data at the right time, in the right form, for the right actor — which is not a report, and not a portal, but governed access to primary data as events occur. Transparency across parties — which requires that the parties trust what they see, and trust what happens to what they share. Standards — because bilateral integrations have been built for decades and have never added up to a system.

None of this is easily solved by a product that one company sells and another adopts. It points instead towards infrastructure that is shared, neutral and governed by the actors who depend on it. That is why the ask has remained unmet for so long. Centralised platforms can aggregate data efficiently, but aggregation is not the same as trusted operational coordination. Where participation depends on surrendering control, neutrality becomes difficult to sustain.

The participants did not, of course, ask for "federated data sharing". That is our interpretation of what these requirements imply. Taken together, however, they point towards a federated model: each actor retains control of its data, shares what the shipment requires, and every party sees the operational picture it is entitled to see. The shipment — not the platform — becomes the coordination object. That distinction matters. In a fragmented industry, the durable source of value is not exclusive possession of information; it is the ability of independent actors to make better decisions from a trusted, time-relevant common picture.

The regulation is arriving at the same place

It is equally notable that European regulation is moving in a compatible direction. In February, the European Commission adopted harmonised specifications for data sharing in rail transport under the Data Act, covering freight tracking, tracing and electronic consignment information. From July 2027, authorities across the EU must accept electronic freight transport information under the eFTI Regulation. Access to specified categories of transport information is becoming more regulated, more standardised and increasingly expected across the European freight environment.

That should change how the industry thinks about the question. As access to transport data becomes increasingly standardised, data access itself will no longer be the principal constraint. The scarce thing will be the trusted, shared operational context in which that data means something: where planned, updated and actual events are linked around real shipments, and where every actor in the chain can contribute to and act upon a shared operational picture.

From infrastructure to activation

This is precisely the practical problem the Virtual Watch Tower community has sought to address: creating a federated environment for trusted primary-data sharing and shared situational awareness, developed with shippers, logistics actors, authorities, research institutes and technology providers, and governed through its community. Through VWTnet, shipment itineraries become shared coordination objects; ecosystems form around real transport flows rather than around membership drives; and value grows each time another shipment ecosystem chooses to participate.

The lesson of the August conference is that the coordination problem no longer needs to be explained solely from the infrastructure side. A corridor's own leaders, asked openly, described the coordination gap and articulated many of the conditions needed to close it. What they described is unlikely to emerge from another platform alone. It requires a shared coordination environment that can be activated around real transport flows: corridor by corridor, shipment by shipment.

Corridors such as the southern Baltic — where ferry, rail, road, port and forwarding actors already depend on one another daily — are where that activation is most natural. The actors are known to each other. The interdependence is real. And now, on the record, so is the demand.

About the Authors

Shad Blidberg Hallam is Founder and Executive Lead of Nomon AB and Co-founder and CCO of AKA Innovation AB. He has more than twenty years of executive leadership experience in international logistics, including senior roles at DHL Express and most recently as COO of Green Cargo, Sweden's national rail freight operator. He brings a multimodal operator and transport-buyer perspective spanning rail, road and air.

Mikael Lind is a Senior Strategic Research Advisor at Research Institutes of Sweden (RISE) and was appointed the world's first Adjunct Professor of Maritime Informatics at Chalmers University of Technology. He is co-initiator of community-driven initiatives including collaborative decision making (CDM), Sustainable Port and the Virtual Watch Tower. He is frequently published in international trade press and co-editor of three books on Maritime Informatics and Maritime Decarbonization.

Wolfgang Lehmacher is a global supply chain logistics expert. The former director at the World Economic Forum and CEO Emeritus of GeoPost Intercontinental is an advisory board member of The Logistics and Supply Chain Management Society, an ambassador for F&L, and an advisor to GlobalSF and RISE. He contributes to the knowledge base of Maritime Informatics and is co-editor of the book Maritime Decarbonization.

The opinions expressed herein are the author's and not necessarily those of The Maritime Executive.