IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cmh/wpaper/43.html

Road-rail substitution in the early motoring age, 1910-1938

Author

Listed:
  • Alban de Gmeline

    (University of Cambridge)

  • Alexis Litvine

    (University of Cambridge)

Abstract

We investigate the closures of railway lines in France between 1910 and 1938 when France experienced rapid network shrinkage. Multiple hypotheses have been put forward, ranging from the financial troubles of railway companies, the competition of automobiles and interurban coach services, and the rationalisation of the network leading to its nationalisation and the creation of the SNCF in 1938. We provide a quantitative assessment of these factors using newly assembled data on road and rail networks and the first historical metric for passenger traffic at the station level. Finally, we analyse the impact in terms of spatial inequality.

Suggested Citation

  • Alban de Gmeline & Alexis Litvine, 2025. "Road-rail substitution in the early motoring age, 1910-1938," Working Papers 43, Department of Economic and Social History at the University of Cambridge, revised 19 Mar 2025.
    • Handle: RePEc:cmh:wpaper:43
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/4f058d7b-57ed-400d-9e4d-69db667cf681/download
    File Function: None.
    Download Restriction: None.
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David L. Huff, 1963. "A Probabilistic Analysis of Shopping Center Trade Areas," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 39(1), pages 81-90.
    2. Filippo Simini & Marta C. González & Amos Maritan & Albert-László Barabási, 2012. "A universal model for mobility and migration patterns," Nature, Nature, vol. 484(7392), pages 96-100, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Luigi Capoani, 2023. "Review of the gravity model: origins and critical analysis of its theoretical development," SN Business & Economics, Springer, vol. 3(5), pages 1-43, May.
    2. Dongxiang Chen & Han Zhao & Jun Zhao & Zhenci Xu & Shaohua Wu, 2020. "Mapping the Finer-Scale Carcinogenic Risk of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) in Urban Soil—A Case Study of Shenzhen City, China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(18), pages 1-13, September.
    3. Filippo Simini & Gianni Barlacchi & Massimilano Luca & Luca Pappalardo, 2021. "A Deep Gravity model for mobility flows generation," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 12(1), pages 1-13, December.
    4. Tang, Jinjun & Liu, Fang & Wang, Yinhai & Wang, Hua, 2015. "Uncovering urban human mobility from large scale taxi GPS data," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 438(C), pages 140-153.
    5. Vanni, Fabio, 2024. "A visit generation process for human mobility random graphs with location-specific latent-variables: From land use to travel demand," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 185(C).
    6. Shili Chen & Haiyan Tao & Xuliang Li & Li Zhuo, 2018. "Detecting urban commercial patterns using a latent semantic information model: A case study of spatial-temporal evolution in Guangzhou, China," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(8), pages 1-20, August.
    7. Sohyun Park & Keumsook Lee, 2021. "Examining the Impact of E-Commerce Growth on the Spatial Distribution of Fashion and Beauty Stores in Seoul," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(9), pages 1-20, May.
    8. Kan, Zihan & Liu, Dong & Yang, Xue & Lee, Jinhyung, 2024. "Measuring exposure and contribution of different types of activity travels to traffic congestion using GPS trajectory data," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 117(C).
    9. Feifei Tan & Qunxi Kong, 2020. "Uncovering the driving mechanism of regional synergistic development based on Haken model: case of the Bohai Rim region," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 22(4), pages 3291-3308, April.
    10. Carlo Gianelle & Letizia Montinari & Simone Salotti, 2017. "Interregional Trade, Specialization, and the Business Cycle: Policy Implications for the EMU," Journal of Business Cycle Research, Springer;Centre for International Research on Economic Tendency Surveys (CIRET), vol. 13(1), pages 1-27, May.
    11. Rasouli, Soora & Timmermans, Harry, 2013. "Assessment of model uncertainty in destinations and travel forecasts of models of complex spatial shopping behaviour," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 139-146.
    12. Chen, Yanguang, 2023. "Demonstration of duality of fractal gravity models by scaling symmetry," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    13. Haiyan Hao & Yan Wang, 2024. "A Deep Learning Representation of Spatial Interaction Model for Resilient Spatial Planning of Community Business Clusters," Papers 2401.04849, arXiv.org.
    14. Yu, Weijie & Wen, Haosong & Wang, Wei & Zhao, De & Hua, Xuedong, 2024. "On the calibration and improvement of human mobility models in intercity transportation system," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 653(C).
    15. Kan Wu & Jianrong Ding & Jingli Lin & Guanjie Zheng & Yi Sun & Jie Fang & Tu Xu & Yongdong Zhu & Baojing Gu, 2025. "Big-data empowered traffic signal control could reduce urban carbon emission," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 16(1), pages 1-12, December.
    16. Eszter Baranyai, 2023. "The Socio-Economic Status of Neighbourhoods and Access to Early Childhood Education," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 16(3), pages 1019-1048, June.
    17. Wan, Shulin & Luan, Weixin & Ma, Yu & Haralambides, Hercules, 2020. "On determining the hinterlands of China's foreign trade container ports," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    18. Haiyang Yu & Shuai Yang & Zhihai Wu & Xiaolei Ma, 2018. "Vehicle trajectory reconstruction from automatic license plate reader data," International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks, , vol. 14(2), pages 15501477187, February.
    19. Tranos, Emmanouil & Incera, Andre Carrascal & Willis, George, 2022. "Using the web to predict regional trade flows: data extraction, modelling, and validation," OSF Preprints 9bu5z, Center for Open Science.
    20. Teller, Christoph & Reutterer, Thomas, 2008. "The evolving concept of retail attractiveness: What makes retail agglomerations attractive when customers shop at them?," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 15(3), pages 127-143.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • L92 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Railroads and Other Surface Transportation
    • N74 - Economic History - - Economic History: Transport, International and Domestic Trade, Energy, and Other Services - - - Europe: 1913-

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cmh:wpaper:43. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Guillaume Proffit or Alexis Litvine (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dhcamuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.