75th anniversary of the Transport Circle.

Remarks made on October 15, 2024.

Hello everyone.

Crossing three quarters of a century, and very precisely the entire second half of the 20th century

century as well as the first quarter of the 21st, will not have been banal in the field of

transport!!!

And the Transport Circle, formally created on October 25, 1949, beyond having been

witness to this metamorphosis, will also have been partly the instigator, or at least

less the enlightened inspirer.

Let’s take a brief step back.

At the end of the war, two actors, Roger Guibert, then Director of the Service

SNCF Sales Representative and Director General of SCETA, with Jean Richard-Deshais, Director of

General Society of Departmental Transport, agree to consider that there is

a lot to do to design the transport system of the years to come. And they decide

together, in a few stages from 1944 to 1949, to create the Cercle des Transports. They

will have been the co-founders. Note that the Viscount of Rohan, then president of

The Automobile Club de France sponsored them throughout this process.

The very first president was Jean Aubert, IGPC, successively President of the

National Company of the Rhône and President of the French Navigation Company

Rhineland, and also a professor at the National School of Bridges and Roads before

chair Spie-Batignolles.

Imagine the field that opens up before them! It is objectively immense.

The archives tell us that the transport of goods is the very first

concern of the Circle, whose traffic is shared between rail and road, with

booming maritime transport and a good market share for river trade.

At the same time, technologies are making the automobile accessible to all (the

2CV dates from this period, Berliet trucks begin to ply the roads),