Paris says ‘au revoir’ to Metro tickets with automation
PARIS: They have been in use since 1900, when the Paris Metro opened for business, but soon the city’s familiar rectangular tickets will become a thing of the past, replaced by a fully automated system similar to the one in London.
For many tourists, the little white tickets — often bought in a ‘‘carnet’’ of 10 — are inseparable from a visit to the city.
But the 550 million tickets sold annually are also easy to lose, and often end up littering the pavements, where they take up to a year to decompose, and the magnetic strip on the back tends to fail over time.
So IledeFrance Mobilites who coordinates the transport networks in Paris and its surrounding region, voted yester day to move ahead with the process of automating the system by 2021.
The metro is the 10thbusiest subway system in the world, handling about 1.5 billion passengers a year. But when it comes to technology, it lags behind the likes of London and Tokyo.
The new passes will be introduced in April and October next year, allowing plenty of time for the metro, and its interconnected bus and commuter rail network, to become fully digital before the Paris Olympics in 2024. — Reuters