Managing traffic complexity. Canadian transport planning software package Emme, 1970s–2010s

Abstract

Based on a variety of primary sources, ranging from academic publications to grey literature to interviews, this article tells the story of Emme, a traffic forecasting software package. Designed as a prototype within the University of Montreal in the late 1970s/early 1980s and regularly enhanced by the Canadian firm INRO since then, Emme has been massively used as a commercial product for urban transport planning throughout the world. Bringing to the fore a much neglected, albeit crucial, theme in transport and mobility studies, i.e., the various mathematical tools (models) – and the actors involved in their production – conceived and utilized for designing transport infrastructures and mobility programs and policies, this article may also be of interest to scholars working in fields other than transport and interested in a series of topics ranging from the increasing commercialization of academic knowledge to the organization of knowledge intensive firms.