#clipper card

The second generation of our regional transit payment systems – Clipper – provides new features like instant account updates, paying with a debit or credit card instead, automatic discounts when transferring between systems, etc.

Well, that's how it's supposed to work. But it’s more like a buggy beta.

"The most charitable way I could describe the launch of Clipper 2.0 was, 'It's a hot mess,' and that's charitable," said Denis Mulligan, general manager of the Golden Gate Bridge Highway & Transportation District. At Monday's meeting of the Clipper Executive Board, speakers placed the blame squarely at the feet of Cubic Transportation Systems, the company contracted by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) to operate Clipper.

Cubic specializes in building and managing cross-agency fare systems. The company has a lot of success stories, including the Oyster Card in London, the TAP in LA, and the first generation of Clipper Card.

Clipper Card is now available on iPhone and Apple Watch with an express mode that lets you just tap and pay without having to unlock your phone first.

SFist took a rather dour tone and paints the Bay Area as late a late adopter when only a few dozen cities and regional transit systems around the world so far support Apple Pay, with or without the express mode feature.

At last, a couple years behind other cities, San Francisco now has added Apple Wallet and Apple Watch paying capability on mass transit, with Android capability on the way soon.

As SFist reported in February, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) and the intramodal Clipper Card finally got around to adding mobile payments during the pandemic. Now, as of Thursday, riders on BART and Muni can just wave their iPhone or Apple Watch over a Clipper reader to pay fares on trains and buses. Clipper Cards can be added to the Apple Wallet, and be managed using a new Clipper Card app.

A mobile app and payment system were among the $194 million worth of upgrades included in the 2017 renewal of the Clipper Card contract and scheduled to be complete by 2023.

The Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) is accelerating its expansion of the number of stations where Clipper is the only fare product available for purchase.

Since August of 2019, BART has eliminated the sales of paper tickets at five stations (19th Street/Oakland, Embarcadero, Powell Street, Downtown Berkeley and San Francisco International Airport).

Accelerating this effort will help to create a more contactless and sanitary system in the era of COVID-19. One or more stations per week will be converted to primarily Clipper sales with the reusable, reloadable and regionally accepted Clipper card as the main fare product available for purchase. More than 91 percent of customers currently use Clipper.

Because there are no moving parts, Clipper Card readers are more reliable and cheaper to maintain than the machine-fed paper ticket system. With Clipper Card a decade old now and the readers already installed, it's striking that BART has only started phasing out paper tickets in the last year.

The transition begins June 8 at Dublin/Pleasanton Station.

Transferring between the Bay Area’s trains, buses, and ferries involves navigating a dizzying and irrational set of fares and rules. All of that may change one day if San Francisco Assemblymember David Chiu and advocates succeed in passing Assembly Bill 2057, the “Bay Area Seamless Transit Act,” which would force the Bay Area’s 27 transit agencies to unify fares and work on creating schedules that facilitate easy transfers between systems.

Merging transit agencies would not create as seamless an experience as putting the resources and funding directly towards coordinating services and systems.

The San Francisco Bay Area already has an example of in Clipper Card. A single card can be used to ride most transit systems in the region. Some agencies like Muni now store their monthly passes on Clipper Card instead of printing paper passes of their own. A seamless future for payments could be monthly "Clipper Pass" valid for any participating agency.

Rethinking the Clipper

A specific interaction you’d like to redesign in the BART Experience

Opportunity: How might we rethink the clipper card for more functionality and bring back the pride and joy into taking public transport?

Question: Does it need to be a card?

My growing transit-card collection

TORONTO–I’m coming home from here with an unusual souvenir: a plastic card with embedded electronics.

This city made me do it. Buying a Presto Card to pay for transit, even with its $6 purchase fee, made sense factoring in the slight discount it gets on the Toronto Transit Commission’s streetcars and subways and the much larger break it gives on the Union Pearson Express airport train. With the C…

‘You Hacked, ALL Data Encrypted.’

That was the message on San Francisco Muni station computer screens across the city, giving passengers free rides all day on Saturday.

Inside sources say the system has been hacked for days.

The SFMTA is understandably dodgy on details while the fare system remain compromised.

A spokesperson with the transit agency tells KPIX 5 it is an ongoing investigation.