A computer upgrade shut down BART

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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...)