"The world does not come quietly wrapped up in facts", in the same way, daily mobility does not appear spontaneously as a concept and object of research. Daily mobility is the result of a contingent historical construction of technical devices and conceptual objects. The thesis proposes a historical and epistemological perspective on the instruments of economics of transportation, built upon an original body of interviews and archives dating back to the late 1950s. This material shows the gradual emergence of the concept of daily mobility as well as its key concepts (trip, typical working day, generalized cost). It also helps to explain the remarkable stability of the technical devices of this field (quantification, modelling and economic assessment) through the concept of technical system or matrix, borrowed from anthropology of technology. The performative aspects studied in the thesis are twofold: first, the instruments of economics of transportation show a contingent image of daily mobility practices, focusing on trips and flows. Empirical analyzes realized with several mobility surveys from France, Spain, Germany and the United States show alternative images of mobility. Then, prediction models and economic assessment procedures impact investment choices and thus impact the form of transportation networks. A model of evolving transportation networks is proposed to better understand this impact. This thesis seeks to understand the production of knowledge and action on daily mobility through the instruments of economics of transportation: how do we know what we believe we know about daily mobility? How what we know about daily mobility impacts the way we act on it?
