OREANDA-NEWS. The EBRD is financing an innovative new ticketing system for public transpovrt in Budapest, the first in continental Europe to accommodate contactless bank card technology.

The new system is likely to give the Hungarian capital's economy a sizeable boost, reduce its carbon footprint - and will replace a status quo which still relies on paper tickets and mechanical punchers.

Many Budapest residents will tell you that their metro was the first "on the continent". This cleverly excludes London, which had the first metro in the world.

But the Budapest metro, inaugurated to celebrate the millennium of the Hungarian nation in 1896 by Emperor Franz Joseph, was certainly a wonder of its time. And there is one thing that recalls an era long past: paper tickets.

"Tourists take pictures of our mechanical ticket punchers in buses and trams - many are surprised they still exist in real life," said Levente Nagy, the director of business development of municipal transport authority, BKK.

"The system is a burden on the city - paper products are simply not flexible enough." Today, Budapest wants to borrow another great idea from London: a 21-century automated fare collection system, known to "Tube" passengers as the Oyster card. But it will do one better.