Paris to bid 'au revoir' to its Metro tickets

PARIS - They've 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 purchased in a 'carnet' of 10 - are inseparable from a visit to the city. They're frequently found years later tucked between the pages of a book, in the back of a wallet or under a sofa.

But they are also easy to lose, 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, meaning the tickets, 550 million of which are sold each year, don't work.