We will no longer make holes, little holes before boarding our train in France.
The SNCF has just announced that the composting machines, lemon yellow lookouts posted at the entrance to each station platform, were slowly – but surely – disappearing from the landscape, along with the paper tickets.
E-tickets (nine out of ten sold today) got the better of this traveling companion, whose maintenance had become too costly.
And too bad for seniors who do not yet have the joy of knowing SNCF Connect.
The gesture of composting is no longer mandatory before boarding your train since January 1st.
It's over, with him, the endless announcement message inviting us to denounce ourselves to the controller if we had inadvertently forgotten to slip his ticket into the slot...
The ancestor in flesh and blood of these big yellow boxes is to be found near the Parisian metro: it is the famous puncher.
In public transport, he was responsible for checking passenger tickets, checking their class and fare, then punching a hole in them using his metal punch.
A somewhat repetitive job, immortalized by the young Gainsbourg's most famous song.
Mechanical and orange
In the early 1970s, in the metro, the machine replaced the man.
But it is no less fallible than him and in 1973, the RATP must recall, for a time, the punchers to limit "the free-rider".
About ten years later, the first composting machines appeared in SNCF stations.
They are orange (and mechanical), make a hell of a noise.
They make it possible to make a notch in the ticket and to engrave on it the date of the day and a code designating the station of departure.
The main challenge is then to succeed in putting your ticket in the right direction: printed face up, magnetic strip down, all without trying three times at the risk of being yelled at by other travelers. in a hurry.
The stamping then serves not only to prove that the ticket has already been used but also to count the number of passengers per train in order to adapt traffic to attendance.
Useful, therefore, for SNCF statistics.
Finally, it establishes a contract between the user and the company in the event of bodily injury caused during the journey.
An orange composter in 2001. DAMIEN MEYER / AFP
In the 2000s, the terminals changed from orange to yellow - as if dressing them up in the colors of the sun made control more pleasant.
They are also adorned with a new modernity: digital screen, marking of the hour and the day in clear on the ticket.
With their dismantling, it is a small symbol of departure on a journey that disappears.
To console ourselves, we can think of our neighbor, Belgium - which has never had automatic composting machines and is doing just as well.
While waiting for the 3,000 or so TGV, TER and Intercités ticket machines to be removed, travelers in possession of paper tickets are invited to report to the skipper before the train departs to have their ticket marked.
Does this remind you of something ?
The most recent machines.
AFP