The contractor tasked to update the Bay Area’s transit fare payment system has missed a May 30 deadline to start bulk upgrades of Clipper cards.
On Monday at the Clipper Executive Board, Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) officials updated transit agencies on the latest delays to Clipper 2.0, including a 27-hour outage last month that prevented BART customers from purchasing or adding value to their Clipper cards at BART vending machines.
Frustration over the delays and outages continues to grow with those in charge of the Bay Area’s transit systems, including BART General Manager Bob Powers.
Lalit Singh, chief operating officer at Cubic, said they identified that an AT&T circuit network connecting BART’s data center system and Cubic’s system was not working. The cause of the issue, a payment to AT&T was paid.
“That’s when we figured out that we have multiple accounts with AT&T. On one of the accounts, the payment[s} were not made, and we couldn’t find where the circuits, which are in support of the BART system, were, because they were not in our account system,” Singh said.
Powers said Cubic is affecting his ability “to deliver quality service for the Bay Area and for the BART riders.”
“Cubic not paying their bill, are you kidding me? That’s ridiculous. BART is so done with Cubic right now. You have zero credibility,” Powers said.
Addressing the missed deadline for the bulk migration of Clipper cards, Angus Doval, assistant chief of Clipper development and budget with the MTC, said there was a delay in Cubic’s deployment of a back-office update that was originally scheduled for May 17. The installation update was delayed to May 24 and then to May 31. Finally, when Cubic installed the update last weekend, Doval said the update had failed and is awaiting an assessment from Cubic.
MTC’s Executive Director Andrew Fremier told the board he was “extremely disappointed” that the next generation of Clipper was not ready for the start of bulk migration.
“The transition to next gen that was expected to take three months is now coming up on six months, and it’s counting,” Fremier said. “This is a fact, and we at MTC, both staff and the commission, take very seriously.”
He added that the commission is planning for a closed session to discuss “contractual remedies.”
So far, about 1.7 million cards have been converted to Clipper 2.0 and over 45 percent of fare transactions paid with Clipper are made under the new system, Fremier said.
As far as when bulk migration could begin, Cubic and MTC did not provide a certain date. Doval said the presentation packet to the board had a date of June 19, but the date had not reflected the failed weekend update.
