Francis Grass, an Ecole Polytechnique graduate, had his first executive roles with the SNCF and the Danone Group. In 1988, he arrived in Toulouse to commission the Metro’s A Line, and until 2022 was managing director of SEMVAT (now called Tisséo Voyageurs), devoting his final year there to getting the company back on track after the AZF explosion. He then went on to manage the Île-de-France region with Connex (which became Veolia Transport, and now Transdev), and following that, he was appointed managing director for France. As President of Tisséo Engineering (2014–2020), he was responsible for managing the Téléo project, in parallel with the third Metro line.
Over the years, he has gained an in-depth knowledge of public transport, in all its modes, rail, Metro, tramway, bus, bicycle, carpooling,… and cable car transport, particularly having worked on the Créteil and Grenoble projects. Since 2014, he has been Deputy Mayor of Toulouse.