The patience of Bay Area transit officials is running thin as delays continue with the rollout of the next generation of the Clipper card system that will eventually allow transit riders to pay for fares with a credit or debit card.
Staff from Cubic and from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), which administers the Clipper card program, presented its latest timeline to Bay Area transit officials to the Clipper Executive Board on June 2. Cubic and the MTC will again miss a deadline to start customer transition to the new system, Clipper 2.0. At last month’s meeting, staff estimated to start the transition to the new system in July, but that has now been pushed to August, leaving transit officials with doubts on the latest timeline.
Julie Kirschbaum, director of transportation for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, told staff that she had “no confidence,” adding that the staff’s presentation focused on accomplishments rather than how they plan to mitigate current risks, was “disrespectful of the board’s time.”
At last month’s meeting, staff estimated to start the transition to the new system in July, but that has now been pushed to August.
“To come and slip 30 days with no kind of explanation of why, just 30 days and what had slipped and what was being done to bring things back on track has left me with very, very little confidence in August,” Kirschbaum said.
Anthony DeVito, senior director at Cubic, responsible for completing Clipper 2.0, said there have been accomplishments completed, including upgrading all Muni fare gates with next-generation readers and supplying BART with enough materials to upgrade its fare gates with the latest readers.
While there have been some accomplishments, new risks to the project could delay the timeline further.
Mark Stadtherr with Cubic, who has joined the project as an advisor, said his role was to understand the issues that arise from participants testing the new system and to resolve them quickly ahead of the projected late summer launch.
Stadtherr added that Cubic is holding daily meetings with teams involved in all the various components of the project and updating the MTC on issues and resolutions, though the meetings had only started two weeks ago.
“You started doing something two to three weeks ago that in my mind needed to start six months ago,” Kirschbaum said.
BART’s General Manager Bob Powers, who also chairs the Clipper Executive Board, told Cubic that they had “zero credibility,” as this was the third meeting that the timeline had been pushed back.
DeVito said the project was about 18 months late, but Powers countered that the project was more about 23 months late.
“The Bay Area deserves better,” Powers said. And it’s just disappointing that, you know, we can’t get that message across to you and your team, but the Bay Area deserves better.”
The next Clipper Executive Board meeting is scheduled for June 23.