For years, Bay Area residents who traveled to New York, London, Toronto, or many other cities around the globe have marveled at how easy it is to pay a transit fare. In most world-class cities, just tap your credit card on the fare gate reader and they open—no special cards, tickets, or apps required.
"This is an area where we're finally catching up," said State Senator Scott Wiener at an event Wednesday morning marking the lunch of Clipper II, which means on Muni, Caltrain, AC Transit, BART, and all but a few of the Bay Area's transit agencies, it is finally possible to pay directly with a credit card.
"Riding Muni today is even easier," said SFMTA's Julie Kirschbaum, who was also at the event. "It's just in time for holiday tourism. Muni is a great way to get around."
BART pioneered the move and started on the Clipper II direct-payment system in August. "11 percent of BART riders are now tap-and-ride," explained BART's Bob Powers. "It improves the customer experience. Riders say it's transformational."
Also transformational: with Clipper II now rolled out across the Bay Area comes significance cost savings. Riders transferring between Bay Area transit operators will save up to $2.85 per transfer. That means a commuter who takes Muni and BART daily, explained Kirschbaum, will now save "$1,500 a year going between Oakland and San Francisco."
To compute the savings for all trips, Seamless Bay Area and the Transbay Coalition put together this handy fare calculator.
Speaking of advocates, Adina Levin, one of Seamless Bay Area's founders, was jazzed to be at the event. "It's an exciting day. I'm happy to get the free transfer from Caltrain to Muni." She added that the new feature will help boost ridership when people don't have to think as hard about how they're going pay and how much it will cost to take transit instead of driving.
The launch of Clipper II, built by Cubic Transportation Systems, was not entirely without hiccups however. Officials acknowledged that the Clipper website was overwhelmed by people attempting to upgrade their cards to the new system in order to get the discounts. Reports came in to Streetsblog that users got random error messages when they tried to log in.
"Some customers are having issues with both the Clipper website and the Clipper mobile app. Indications are that customer demand has overwhelmed the system a bit," explained John Goodwin, spokesperson for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which is administering the program. "Our guys—and the Cubic crew—are troubleshooting these issues and working to get the ‘pipeline’ flowing again as soon as possible."
The website issue only impacts people trying to use their plastic Clipper cards or the Clipper app. As soon as the website is up and running again, they can upgrade it to get the transfer discounts. Until then, riders can either continue to use their Clipper cards as they are (although they won't get a transfer discount). Or they can just skip that step and use their credit cards or virtual payment systems, such as Apple Pay, and get the transfer discount now.
"Riding the bus should be as easy as buying a cup of coffee, and now it is," said Wiener. “Getting tap-to-pay off the ground is a great step to ensure Bay Area residents get the world class transit they deserve."
