[hal-01071139] Forecasting Urban Traffic in France, 1950s to 2000s

Despite of its impact on urban transportation policies after the World War II, urban travel demand modeling (UTDM) - an array of mathematical tools and practices geared towards predicting flows in urban transportation networks, such as urban highways and mass transit systems - has received scant attention from humanities and social sciences scholars. This working paper offers a first long-term analysis - from the 1950s to the 2000s - of the trajectory of this kind of modeling in France. To do so, it makes use of an analytical framework which envisages modeling practices as a production process: aside from the "product" itself, i.e. the main characteristics of the model under study, the analysis is interested in the different actors involved in producing the model (individuals and institutions), as well as the "raw materials" (for example, data from surveys of household travel) and the "means of production", such as computer facilities (hardware and software), which are necessary for its production and implementation. Based on this analytical framework, this paper highlights a process characterized by two main developments. From 1950-1980, State French engineers along with private consulting firms, after having familiarized themselves with American modeling practices, succeeded in creating a national expertise in this domain, which the central French state normalized, disseminated, and implemented on a large scale throughout the national territory in the 1970s. The post 1980 period clearly contrasts with what went before. Indeed, evidence shows that the French state progressively withdrew from UTDM, and, therefore, prepared the way for the rise to dominance of private (and more often that not foreign) engineering consulting firms, which became the main repositories of expertise concerning urban traffic forecasting in France.



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