ABSTRACT
The first reflex when addressing the issue of competition between the two modes in France in the 1930s is to describe it simply as brutal confrontation, the revenge of road over rail, with road transport and the advent of the motor car symbolising all that is modern and desirable and rail a debt-ridden relic from a bygone era unable to adapt to the times. As the economic crisis hit the automobile industry, manufacturers shifted their production from private cars towards the seemingly more promising bus and lorry sector, where sales had been made easier with the widespread extension of credit facilities. Unable to bring any great influence to bear on the road transport system, the big railways next sought to go further than the fiscal and legal harmonisation so necessary in the sector and tried to promote the idea of contract-based 'coordination' to ensure a fair distribution of traffic between rail and road.
