Bay Area transit agencies lost out on approximately $658,000 in fares when the Clipper card system malfunctioned last week, forcing BART and Muni to allow passengers to ride for free, according to officials.
BART is out about $380,000, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which administers the Clipper card. Muni lost roughly $55,000, the MTC said. Other agencies lost smaller amounts:
- Caltrain: $43,000
- AC Transit: $22,000
- Golden Gate Ferry: $18,000
- SF Bay Ferry: $18,000
- Golden Gate Transit: $11,000
- SamTrans: $11,000
- VTA: $10,000
Additionally, the MTC says a total of $15,600 in amounts of $5,000 or less is owed to regional agencies that include SMART trains in the North Bay and several bus services in the North Bay and East Bay.
Transit officials were initially baffled as to why Clipper cards suddenly did not work at the start of service July 1. Gates at BART and Muni stations were wide open to incredulous riders until about midday, when the problem was resolved.
Now the officials have named a culprit, and it’s evoking Y2K vibes. Clipper cards failed because of an incorrectly programmed calendar, Andrew Fremier, the MTC’s executive director, told the board Thursday. The flaw was uncovered by Cubic, the transportation company that operates Clipper with the MTC.
“Cubic’s investigation uncovered that several years ago, a calendar file integrated into the legacy Clipper system was programmed to expire on June 30, 2025, and had not been updated to the new contract extension date for the legacy system of 2026,” Fremier told the MTC commissioners. “When the calendar expired at the end of the day on June 30, 2025, the Clipper card readers were unable to validate the correct fare on July 1, 2025.”
The transit agencies, many of which are under extreme budget pressures, will be reimbursed, possibly by Cubic, but the details are still being ironed out.
BART recorded 103,379 paid trips the day of the outage, down from 198,549 the previous Tuesday. Data shows that Tuesday is the busiest day of the week on BART.
Muni officials had no comment.
Clipper suffered another outage Tuesday that was narrower in scope. Customers using Google Pay and Apple Pay were unable to add money to their Clipper cards, but the problem was fixed in an hour.
An improved version of Clipper was due to be released in 2024 but was indefinitely delayed. An MTC spokesperson told The Standard it is expected to be released by year’s end.