The Paris Métro ticket has reached the end of the line after 120 years in usage.
The very first ticket was used on 19th July 1900 at 1pm when Line One was inaugurated. “It cost just 25 centimes in old money for a first-class seat. Now a single ticket costs €1.90,” writes The Guardian.
The rectangular cardboard tickets are to be replaced with tickets on mobile phones or travelcards by 2025. Grégoire Thonnat is the author of the 2019 book Petite Histoire du Ticket de Métro Parisien and wrote about how iconic the tickets have become: “Since 1900, the Métro ticket has accompanied our daily life, at the bottom of our pockets, in our wallets or in the middle of the pages of our books … it will soon disappear. It’s one of the elements of Paris life. Its lifespan is very short, around an hour to an hour and a half, but we’ve become attached to them. It’s irrational.”
The Île-de-France regional transport authority, of which Paris is part, had wanted to phase out the paper tickets earlier but was held back by a catalogue of catastrophes including the Coronavirus Pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The global shortage of microchips also had an impact.
The Paris Métro was in the news last month after the French transit body - RATP - announced it is considering turning the thermostats down on its trains. This was one measure suggested to try and save power along with slowing down the escalators and reducing train speeds. It stated that its energy costs for 2022 are likely to be a third higher than in 2021 - an extra 70 million euros ($67.5 million).
