Universal transit card a hit in the San Francisco Bay Area

[marmar]

from the San Francisco Chronicle:




Clipper, the Bay Area's costly and long-delayed universal transit card, is gaining ground at a good clip since its official premiere in June, regional transit officials say.

But the fast pace at which Bay Area transit riders are switching to Clipper has at times overwhelmed the system, creating difficulties for users. And bigger challenges loom, starting with the elimination of some paper Muni Fast Passes in November, when they move entirely to Clipper. Clipper, a plastic card with an embedded computer chip, allows transit riders to pay fares by touching their cards to readers on fare gates, buses, ferries and trains operated by Muni, BART, AC Transit, Golden Gate Ferry and Transit and Caltrain. SamTrans and Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority vehicles are scheduled to come aboard the system by the end of the year.

Eventually, regional transportation officials hope passengers on all of the Bay Area's two dozen transit agencies will use the cards to pay their way. But for now, officials are pleased with, but challenged by, the surge in use of the blue and white cards.

During the first week in August, Clipper cards were used 93,800 times to pay fares on the five transit agencies - an increase of 11 percent over the previous week, and up more than 240 percent compared with a year earlier when there was a soft launch of the program on the five systems.

With more people using Clipper, more problems have surfaced. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/08/22/MNQ21F0VSO.DTL#ixzz0xKvTg9FE

[nxylas]

1. nxylas likes this

Oops, thought I was on Facebook for a minute there.

Seriously, it's nice to hear some good news on this forum for a change.