A date for Bay Area public transit riders to transition to the new Clipper card payment system remains up in the air.
Despite efforts made last week to allow BART passengers to start paying for fares using either a credit or debit card, the rollout for Clipper 2.0 still has no exact date, transportation officials said at this week’s Clipper Card executive board meeting.
Jason Weinsten, the director of electronic payments for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), outlined Tuesday to the board dozens of tasks that remained for completion from the end of August through mid-September. The presentation slides said that progress on the tasks would help determine a customer transition timeline.
Leaders of the Bay Area’s transit systems again pushed Weinstein for a tentative transition date as they have at previous board meetings. However, Weinstein did not provide one, given that the remaining items are still not yet completed. The transition to the new fare payment system has been delayed at least over a year.
“It’s a fair question,” Weinstein said in answering a question if he had a tentative date for customer transition from Denis Mulligan, the general manager for the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District. “It’s just one I don’t have a great answer for, given some of the things we still have out there in terms of risks.”
Christy Wegener, executive director for the Livermore Amador Valley Transit Authority, also had concerns about the lack of a transition date.
The rollout for Clipper 2.0 still has no exact date.
“Right now, it doesn’t even seem like there’s a goal post, Wegener told Weinsten, “we literally have no date for customer transition.”
The board also received preliminary data from the first five days of BART activating the open payment system. Weinstein reported that over five percent of trips were made using this open payment method.
At San Francisco International Airport, 19 percent of trips that started or ended at SFO were made using either a credit or debit card. The average sales of Clipper cards were down 40 percent compared to previous weeks at SFO, Weinstein added.
Other transportation leaders are itching to pilot the new open payment system ahead of the full rollout of Clipper 2.0.
Mulligan and AC Transit General Manager Sal Llamas expressed interest in piloting the open payment system.
BART General Manager Bob Powers said he convened a separate technical working group to see what components of Clipper 2.0 could be implemented ahead of the full transition, which led to BART being one of the first transit systems in the Bay Area to allow for credit and debit card fare payments.
Powers plans to hold another technical meeting next month before the board’s Sept. 22 meeting. The goal is to discuss the next set of passenger benefits and to receive updates on the rest of the transit agencies.
“Pulling together this technical working group will be very helpful in navigating the next steps,” Powers said.