Socio-économie des transports : une lecture conjointe des instruments et des concepts

Abstract

This paper aims to examine the context of creation of the main concepts and methods used in the field of economics of transportation to describe and model daily mobility. It aims to understand how these concepts and methods have persisted and how they have contributed to shape the field of mobility studies. This question is rooted in an apparent paradox: a certain way of understanding and modeling daily mobility, the so called "classical method", has persisted for half a century despite drawing constant criticism. To explain this paradox, the scope of analysis must be extended to other major tools of transportation economics. For this reason, I propose the concept of technical matrix, conceived as a system composed of three interconnected methodological devices. Assuming the existence of this technical matrix helps to explain the stability of the methods used to describe and model mobility, but also to understand the origin of the major concepts that structure the field of daily mobility studies.

Keywords

• daily mobility
• transport policy
• economics of transportation
• transportation forecasting