The beginning of the end for the Paris metro ticket?

Are you planning a trip to Paris? Be warned: the good old metro tickets are on the way out.

Jean-Christophe Laurence
Press

Since October 15, booklets of 10 tickets have started to gradually disappear, in favor of plastic chip cards. Cardboard tickets will only be offered individually, at the ticket office, and at a higher price. Ultimately, this could herald their outright demise.

This technological step was undoubtedly inevitable. But for some, it marks the end of a symbol in the Parisian imagination.

“The metro ticket is a small icon”, summarizes the historian Grégoire Thonnat, author of the book A brief history of the Paris metro ticket, launched in 2010, and reissued three times since.

Born 121 years ago, at the same time as the “metropolitan”, the metro ticket has crossed fashions and eras. He knew the Universal Exhibition of 1900, the German occupation, the Liberation, the events of May 68, the yellow vests crisis … Serge Gainsbourg even made a song of it (The lilac punch) which largely contributed to its myth.

Symbol of everyday life

Long story for an object of barely 3 cm x 6.5 cm. But above all, a story of everyday life, underlines Grégoire Thonnat.

“Young, old, poor, rich, everyone has had this ticket in their hands,” he says. It was used as a transport ticket, but also as a bookmark for books, as a filter to roll a firecracker, as a support to write your phone number when you flirt, ”he says.

For the historian, the metro ticket is downright a “Proust madeleine”, in that it evokes, in its sole sight, moments, pleasant or not, spent in the Parisian undergrounds.

“A lot of people have strong memories of the metro,” he says.

In more than 120 years, the Paris metro ticket has also had time to evolve. Its format, its graphics, its colors have changed over the years. It has been brown, mauve, yellow, jade green, then white since 2007.

Until the end of the 1950s, you could buy them for compartments of 1^D or 2^e class. It was “composted” at the entrance to the quays by controllers (hence the Gainsbourg song) until the turnstiles were installed in 1968.

For all these reasons, “it is also a reflection of the evolution of modes of transport and therefore of the lifestyles of Parisians”, adds Grégoire Thonnat.

The dematerialization of the ticket

The Parisian metro, one of the oldest in the world (in sixth place, after those in London, Istanbul, Chicago, Glasgow and Budapest), was a real success from its inauguration in 1900, welcoming 30,000 people from the first day. In 1946, 1.6 billion people used it every year. Attendance fell in the 1970s, before rebounding in strength. Before the pandemic in 2019, 1.5 million people used it, not counting the RER (suburban metro), with nearly 500,000 users. The saturated network is in the process of being unblocked by the construction of the Grand Paris Express, a suburban metro which is to complete the RER and be inaugurated around 2025.

The gradual withdrawal of the metro ticket is justified for reasons of fluidity and ecology. Travelers will be invited to use new dematerialized tickets, using a smart card or a smart phone.

For tourists, the Navigo Easy card is recommended. It can be bought in the machines, as for the classic metro tickets. Three metro lines will first be affected (3, 6, 10), then almost the entire network, from next January.

A bit nostalgic, Grégoire Thonnat wonders if the arguments put forward are really valid. “So much the better if it improves traffic,” he says. But cardboard can be recycled … A plastic card with electronic components inside, is it really better for the environment? », Asks the historian.