Bay Area commuters get free rides Tuesday morning due to Clipper card outage

Bay Area commuters get free rides Tuesday morning due to Clipper card outage


Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) passengers walk off a train at the Richmond station on March 15, 2023 in Richmond, California.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

Commuters in and around San Francisco rode into work for free on Tuesday morning due to an outage in the Clipper card system, which is used to handle payments for train, bus and ferry rides.

“ATTENTION: The Clipper system is experiencing an outage on all operators this morning,” the Bay Area Clipper account wrote in a post on X. “Please be prepared to pay your fare with another form of payment if required by your transit agency.”

Many buses were waving commuters on without asking for payment, and at Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) train stations, the faregates were open, allowing travelers to walk through for free.

Clipper is owned by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which manages transportation for the nine-county Bay Area. The service is used by hundreds of thousands of tech workers in San Francisco and Silicon Valley.

The MTC website said there were 1.35 million unique Clipper cards — physical and digital — used in May, the highest monthly toll for the year and the most since December 2019, before the pandemic. A fact sheet from the MTC says Clipper is used by 800,000 transit riders a day across the region.

BART fare gates open on July 1, 2025, due to Clipper outage

Kif Leswing

BART, in particular, has undergone dramatic changes in recent years, most notably installing fare gates starting in late 2023, with full deployment expected to be completed by the end of this year.

In the first five months of the year, average BART station exits totaled between 170,000 and 182,000 a month, according to its website. Those numbers are way down from the pre-pandemic days of 2019, when averages were generally above 400,000 a month.

The MTC has plans to roll out an updated system called Clipper 2.0, which it says will be a “customer-focused, cost-effective fare collection system” with a “flexible platform for future fare structures.” Features include use across the various mobile operating systems, updated communication and “expanded retail, online and mobile sales.”

The update, however, has been routinely delayed, leading to tense confrontations at recent Clipper executive board meetings.

WATCH: San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie on local economy

We're excited to invite the country and world back, says San Francisco Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie



Source

Nvidia’s China return buys time for Beijing to boost its chip drive
Technology

Nvidia’s China return buys time for Beijing to boost its chip drive

As semiconductors have become a geopolitical hot potato over the past few years, it’s no surprise that Nvidia , the leader in artificial intelligence-related chips, has been caught up in escalating tensions between the U.S. and China. When Nvidia returned to the China market last week , seemingly with the blessing of Washington, it sparked […]

Read More
Block’s stock pops on addition to S&P 500
Technology

Block’s stock pops on addition to S&P 500

The logo for the U.S. tech firm Block is displayed and reflected in numerous digital screens in London, England, on March 3, 2023. Leon Neal | Getty Images Block shares jumped 7% on Monday after S&P Global said the company will join the S&P 500, replacing Hess, which was acquired by Chevron for $54 billion. […]

Read More
YouTube wipes out thousands of propaganda channels linked to China, Russia, others
Technology

YouTube wipes out thousands of propaganda channels linked to China, Russia, others

Beata Zawrzel | Nurphoto | Getty Images Google announced Monday the removal of nearly 11,000 YouTube channels and other accounts tied to state-linked propaganda campaigns from China, Russia and more in the second quarter. The takedown included more than 7,700 YouTube channels linked to China. These campaigns primarily shared content in Chinese and English that […]

Read More