The Paris metro celebrates its 100th anniversary in July 2000! The metro opened its doors to the public for the first time on July 19, 1900, just in time for the Paris Universal Exposition. It had one line (line 1, of course!) which ran at 30 km/hr. At first, it had its share of mini-catastrophes: occasional flooding, fires, construction accidents, but was quickly running smoothly. To celebrate its centennial, the RATP (Réseau autonome des transports parisiens) has been making a number of visible improvements in its service and network, with the brand new metro line 14 running from St. Lazare to the Bibliothèque Nationale on the rive gauche, and the new Meteor line to the surburbs. The Tuileries metro stop has been decorated in memorabilia of the history of the metro: old tickets, photos of art deco architectural details on early lines (some of which still exist). In all nearly 200 metro stations are due be revamped 
Some interesting statistics: each year, over 2 billion people take the metro and the RER (suburban rapid train) ! The Meteor line is the first automatic train in the world able to board 40,000 people per hour. (the record up to now was 10,000 people per hour). 
In the future, the metro will be payable with the Modeus card, a smart card (electronic wallet) for paying the metro ticket, as well as a variety of metro commerces: newspapers, pastries, telephone, drinks.