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Old December 5th 03, 08:49 PM posted to uk.transport.london
Mark Brader Mark Brader is offline
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First recorded activity at LondonBanter: Jul 2003
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Default Magnetic stripe tickets

Can anyone help answer a query from a friend in Japan?

He's trying to find information about when magnetic stripe tickets were
first used, and heard that LT had some in the 1960s. ...


I visited Montreal at least three times in the 1960s and 1970s, and I'm
pretty sure the tickets for the Montreal Metro were of the same style
on each occasion. If I'm right, this means they were using magnetic-
stripe tickets there by 1967 -- presumably from 1966 when their first
two Metro lines opened.

Further, since the MUCTC/SCTUM chose to mimic the Paris Metro in various
respects, this suggests that Paris may also have been using magnetic-
stripe tickets by the mid-1960s. However, unless the Paris tickets
have changed size and shape since then, Montreal didn't copy that;
the Paris ones I've used (since 1985) are about Edmondson size, whereas
the Montreal ones I remember are smaller and squarer, like normal North
American transit tickets. So maybe Montreal didn't copy the use of
magnetic stripes from Paris either, in which case I have no idea when
they were first used in Paris.
--
Mark Brader "Doing the wrong thing is worse than doing nothing."
Toronto "Doing *anything* is worse than doing nothing!"
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