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A computer upgrade shut down BART

(www.bart.gov)
232 points ksajadi | 2 comments | 05 Sep 25 14:52 UTC | HN request time: 0.471s | source
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ninetyninenine ◴[05 Sep 25 18:21 UTC] No.45141839[source]▶
I mean despite it's history the snark is well deserved. With so many companies and people in the bay paying taxes, where the hell does all the money go?

Interesting, tidbit you added here. But snark is needed for this situation.

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IshKebab ◴[05 Sep 25 18:42 UTC] No.45142101[source]▶
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.
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gshulegaard ◴[05 Sep 25 19:30 UTC] No.45142648[source]▶
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.

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rahimnathwani ◴[06 Sep 25 00:12 UTC] No.45145222[source]▶
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.
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1. inferiorhuman ◴[06 Sep 25 02:17 UTC] No.45146003[source]▶
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).
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2. rahimnathwani ◴[06 Sep 25 15:12 UTC] No.45149989[source]▶
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.