Baden-Württemberg has around 100 designated carpool sites. Commuters depend on them to form shared rides across the region every day. But without real-time occupancy data, neither the ministry nor the commuter had any way of knowing whether a space would be available on arrival.
The Challenge
The Ministry of Transport Baden-Württemberg wanted to change this. The goal was clear: equip carpool sites across the region with real-time occupancy detection and feed that data directly to commuters through existing digital platforms.
The challenge was the environment. These are not managed car parks with marked bays, power connections, and uniform surfaces. They are roadside sites at motorway junctions and federal road exits across the region. Surfaces vary from asphalt to gravel to grass paving. Spaces are unmarked. Trees grow between parking rows. At most locations, there is no electricity supply on site whatsoever.
Any detection system would need to work reliably across seven different sites, each with its own layout, surface conditions, and physical constraints, and do so continuously, in all weather, without human intervention.
The Solution
Sensade deployed 571 NB-IoT wireless sensors across all seven carpool sites, each operating entirely independently of any fixed power supply and requiring no physical markings or site modifications.
The sensors detect occupancy across unmarked, irregular spaces and perform reliably under the conditions these sites demand: heavy rain, snow, fog, leaf fall, and temperatures ranging from -30°C to +50°C across ground surfaces that shift between tarmac, gravel, and grass within the same site.
All data flows into a cloud platform and is pushed directly to MobiData BW, Baden-Württemberg’s regional open data platform, and into the VerkehrsInfo BW app. Commuters can check live availability at any of the seven sites before they leave home.
The system operates fully autonomously, around the clock, without calibration or on-site intervention. Privacy is built in by design: video detection is entirely absent, and no personal data is captured at any point.
The Impact
For the Ministry of Transport, the project delivers a data layer that did not previously exist. Real usage patterns across all seven sites are now visible, continuously and in real time, providing the evidence base needed to manage existing capacity and plan future carpool infrastructure with confidence.
For commuters, availability information that was previously absent is now accessible before they leave home. That reliability makes shared mobility a more dependable choice for everyday commuting.
At a regional level, making carpool parking more predictable directly supports Baden-Württemberg’s broader mobility goals. Fewer single-occupancy vehicles on the road, better use of existing infrastructure, and a public transport network that works more effectively when the connections at either end of the journey are dependable.
Infrastructure That Works in the Real World
The Baden-Württemberg project is a demonstration of what sensor technology can do in genuinely demanding conditions. No marked bays. No power supply. Seven different sites, each with its own constraints. Sensade’s solution performs across all of them, continuously and without intervention.
That is what it means to build infrastructure for the real world.
The Results
- Real-time availability data for commuters
- Live integration into VerkehrsInfo BW app and MobiData BW platform
- Reliable detection across unmarked, off-grid, mixed-surface environments
- 24/7 autonomous operation with no manual intervention
- No video detection, no personal data captured
