A computer upgrade shut down BART

Yeah I was pretty blown away when I visited San Francisco just how archaic it was. In the same place you have driverless cars you have a metro payment system from like 70s USSR or something.

The mag stripe 1960s technology worked much better than the new one, I'm sorry to report.

So tokens and kopeks? Because there were no mag stripe systems in 1970s.

> https://www.ebay.ca/itm/174311087766

How did you pay? I made a Clipper account that I fill up with my credit card and tap my phone to pay...

Which is still shockingly outdated compared to e.g. London, where I just use my tap to pay method of choice on entry and exit, done.

I mean it auto fills/pays from my card. It's just one extra step at setup. I agree it would be nice to just take my card at the rail, but "Shockingly outdated" seems a bit dramatic lol. It's certainly not comparable to "70s USSR" idk where that came from

Oooh, even behind e.g London, the first city in the world to offer tap and pay with bank cards!

You can do that on BART as well.

I remember when I was in college in the early 2010s finding it amusing that SEPTA still used tokens in Philadelphia. On a whim I looked it up, and apparently they did finally stop using them, but only in 2024.

I don't know what your frame of reference is, but BART is above average for US public transit payment systems.

I've lived in the San Francisco Bay Area CA, Portland OR, and Philadelphia PA over the last 10 years. All of those metros have comparable public transit payment systems with auto-loading special use cards and are at various stages of adopting support for tap to pay. Honestly, within the US I can only think of NYC as having a better payment system as they were first movers on tap-to-pay adoption and it's basically fully adopted.

Internationally I think there is a larger range of experiences. I don't travel enough to properly gauge it, but I was in Paris in the last year and I don't think public transit payment was better. Still had to acquire specialized fare cards and navigate different payment systems between RATP and RER. Honestly, SF Bay comes out slightly ahead of Paris if only because Clipper is unified between various transit options (BART, Bus, Ferry, CalTrain) IMO.

They introduced tap-to-pay with your credit card a few weeks ago.

> I don't know what your frame of reference is, but BART is above average for US public transit payment systems.

That doesn't change anything in the comment you're replying to. Just because it's above average for the USA, does not mean it isn't also ancient by global standards.

> Honestly, within the US I can only think of NYC as having a better payment system as they were first movers on tap-to-pay adoption and it's basically fully adopted.

Chicago is pretty good too. IIRC they also have tap-to-pay. In fact, I think they had it before NYC

I was going to say the same thing. I saw this and I don't even ride it regularly anymore.

Frame of reference is the world which is reasonable given the US status in the world.

Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, Dubai, Japan, UK. The USA is supposed to be among the top in terms of technology but infra is just garbage. The BART is pathetic. I don't know why you defend it with pride. Attack it, because if you hate it and you are vocal about it, things are more likely to change.

I'm sick of people defending something that's shit because of pride. It's garbage.

BART now does actually have tap-to-pay, but it's very recent: https://www.kqed.org/news/12052690/bart-fares-2025-credit-ca...

I can tap my credit card on any public transit system in Southern Ontario (where Toronto/Waterloo are located).

I can still use an auto-loading special use card if I want. I do that so I can have a free transfer between different transit systems during my commute.

I mean the answer is in the question--why are the self-driving cars (largely funded by billion-dollar private companies and VC) available in the same city as this anarchic public transit system (funded by largely by regional taxes and ridership fees)

It's also had phone based clipper card support for years now. Credit card open loop systems are pretty slow compared to a well implemented closed loop transit system like they have with suica in japan, but BART's clipper is probably about as slow in comparison

(which we've had to some extent for thirteen years now)

It's also the slowest possible system, there are benefits for a closed loop system: https://atadistance.net/2020/06/13/transit-gate-evolution-wh...

I have a Clipper Card on my Android phone and pay for BART and SF Muni that way.

BART does now accept credit cards at the turnstiles now (I think this started 2 years ago). Agreed that it took a long while to get there, much much longer than in other places.

Personally I prefer the Clipper method, as it's generally faster to scan than a contactless credit card payment (that's going to always be the case for closed-loop payment system). I also like that BART (and Muni, Caltrain, etc.) will pay less to Visa/Mastercard/whomever in transaction fees if I use my Clipper card and periodically top it up (which, as I have my Clipper card on my phone, happens automatically if the balance ever falls below $10). Credit card tap-to-pay is a nice convenience for out-of-town visitors and for locals who rarely use transit and don't have Clipper (or who use a physical Clipper card but forgot it at home), but I don't think it's a great way to pay for transit day-to-day.

I'm sorry to report that you're looking at that tech through rose-tinted glasses. I remember electronic systems that would routinely fail to properly scan the mag stripes. I remember all the people working retail who had special tricks to try to get a card to scan, which would help maybe 25% of the time. I remember cards becoming demagnetized for random reasons and becoming useless. I remember when merchants would have to take a physical carbon imprint of the card, and would have no idea if the card was even real until the paper was processed, days or weeks later.

Clipper (nee TransLink) is a regional system, not a BART specific one. In fact BART was one of the last Clipper hold outs because they were hell bent on having their own BART purse. Time to authorize is really down to which readers you interact with. The current BART turnstiles+readers are pretty slow.

  I can only think of NYC as having a better payment system as they were
  first movers on tap-to-pay adoption and it's basically fully adopted.

Portland's TriMet had tap-to-pay well before New York.

  I was in Paris in the last year and I don't think public transit
  payment was better.

The multi-stage turnstiles at the RER stations… ugh.

I just use my phone to pay for BART?

The Moscow metro system is actually supposed to be pretty good.

We are talking specifically about the BART fare gates, which worked perfectly for 50 years.

We watched this happen again in New York where OMNY was supposed to be the region-wide fare system, but the Port Authority decided not to use it, all the bus systems decided not to use it, and the MTA's railroads decided not to use it. It is a mild disaster. (Hilariously, the Port Authority runs two rail system, PATH and the JFK Airtrain. The Airtrain does take OMNY.)

Does Caltrain still count entering the BART station at Milbrae as not tapping off? That was always my favorite quirk of the Clipper system.

(For those not familiar... Caltrain is a tap on / tap off "proof of payment" system. You're charged the full fare when you tap on, and refunded what you didn't use when you tap off. BART and Caltrain share a platform at Milbrae. You can get off Caltrain and be right at the gate to get into BART by tapping your Clipper card. Well. This taps you into BART, but doesn't tap you off of Caltrain. To get your refund, you had to know this was a thing and go find a fare validator before tapping on to BART. You also end up being inside Caltrain's proof of payment required area without proof of payment while you walk along the platform from Caltrain's fare validator to BART's entry turnstile. I am probably the only person to ever care about this, but...)

Some time ~11 years ago, I needed to take a bus trip in SF. There was nowhere nearby to reload a Clipper card, so I was happy when I found out I could do it online. I was less happy when the web site said it would take 24-48 hours for the newly-loaded funds to be available on my Clipper card.

Chicago has had tap to pay for as long as one lived here (11 years now). I think it predates me having any tap to pay credit card or phone lol.

Now available on BART and coming to other Bay Area transit agencies.

https://www.clippercard.com/ClipperWeb/contactless-payments....

FWIW Septa has had tap-to-pay working for about 2 years now (so, 2 years longer than what BART just rolled out like last week). But barely a decade ago they (septa) were still using physical tokens!

When I moved to the bay area, I thought it was so rad I could use the clipper card for vta + bart + caltrain + muni + ferry all in one.

I find that a little hard to believe given that you can/could service Clipper cards at any Walgreens and a bunch of other retailers (e.g. pharmacies and hardware stores).

  Does Caltrain still count entering the BART station at Milbrae as not tapping off?

Couldn't say. When I took Caltrain regularly I gave up on the BART/Caltrain transfer pretty quickly.

Being built in 1960s-1970s it has proper ventilation. Unlike older systems, like in Boston, where you are forced to breathe in brake dust.

Still the way it is. Clipper is a multi-agency cooperative. It sucks but the fact that it works at all is a real triumph....

In my day, that transfer was a privately owned blue bus called the Jitney.

I was just North of Golden Gate Park. The nearest bus stop was 1 minute away. I wanted to take a 20 minute bus ride. The nearest Walgreens was 30 mins walk away (Geary and 42nd/43rd). The nearest street with shops was 12 mins walk away. I don't know whether any of those shops offered Clipper card top-up.

And yet I included a favorable international comparison as well.

When I lived in Portland you technically _could_ pay TTP, but I don't quite count it because Hop pass accrual meant if you used TriMet regularly you needed a Hop card anyway. Just out of curiosity I checked around and it looks like they extended that functionality to regular bank cards around two years ago [1]. Which is awesome as now the only reason to get a Hop pass is for people that qualify for reduced fares or are unbanked (which makes sense).

> The multi-stage turnstiles at the RER stations… ugh.

Ah yes, had one of many, "I look like the tourist I am," moments navigating those visiting the Versailles.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Portland/comments/1awweix/trimet_ex...

I remember first moving to Philly and getting a SEPTA Key and thinking, "This is dumb, it's literally just a MasterCard. Why can't I use my credit card like NY?" Then a few years later they rolled out support for other bank cards and I immediately took my SEPTA Key out of my wallet.