The Paris Metro is phasing out cardboard tickets after 120 years, taking the capital's urban transit into a contactless future but leaving behind nostalgic fans who will miss the humble rectangular cards.
Beyond their intended use as a transport token, the tickets with their trademark magnetic strip have inspired artists, filmmakers and singers, served as emergency notepads and, most of all, bookmarks.
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"As the metro ticket disappears, so does a part of our lives," said Gregoire Thonnat, a collector and author of a book on the history of the metro ticket. "The metro ticket is part of how we picture Paris."
Ile-de-France Mobilites, which operates the metro's ticketing system, had wanted the pack of 10 tickets known as "carnets" to be gone by the first quarter of this year.
But then the Covid-19 pandemic erupted, and Russia's war in Ukraine, and with it a global shortage of microchips needed to make the smartcards to replace the tickets -- whose sales still total 550 million per year, more than 50 tonnes of paper.
"We were in a hurry, but the chip crisis slowed us down," Laurent Probst, director-general at Ile-de-France Mobilites told AFP.
The operator has started cutting the number of metro stations that still sell carnets to nudge clients towards plastic cards, and many turnstiles can no longer read cardboard tickets.
As a result, the share of card tickets used on urban trips has dropped from more than two-thirds a year ago to well under half now. "Our customers are beginning to change their habits," Probst said.
He said carnets would be gone completely sometime next year.
But, probably until 2024, travellers will still be able to buy single tickets at 1.90 euros ($1.82), a markup from the 1.49 euros a single journey costs when using a smartcard.
Ile-de-France Mobilites is pushing ahead with more modernisation, including the use of smartphones at turnstiles, with Android phones to be enabled within weeks and Apple phones in 2023.
"I'm enthusiastic about this development," Probst said. "This is a sea change in the quality of our customer service."
