4 days ago
- Business
- San Francisco Chronicle
BART riders will soon be able to pay by tapping a credit card. Here's when
After a long wait, BART commuters can finally pay for rides the same way they pay for literally everything else: by tapping a debit or credit card at the gate.
Next week, the regional rail system will introduce a new 'contactless' payment method that policymakers have discussed for years. The open payments that launch at BART Wednesday morning which will eventually be made available on all Bay Area transit systems that use Clipper.
'After evaluating the benefits and considerations, it was decided that we'd try to roll out open payments at one operator, and that the most impactful rollout could be at BART,' said Jason Weinstein, Clipper program director for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, during a presentation to the commission's Clipper Executive Board on July 28.
Staff at MTC have been field testing these new card payments since June, ensuring that chip-enabled cards work at fare gates and that BART's payment portals integrate with people's bank accounts. Originally set to begin last year, the transition to contactless fares took much longer to implement, as it turned out to be more technical and complex than planners originally thought.
Transit riders in London and New York already enjoy contactless card payments, a perk that saves people the trouble of buying a plastic Clipper card at station vending machines. Officials hope the debit and credit card option will be particularly helpful for tourists who might not be familiar with Clipper, and who in the past may have loaded a Clipper card with money only to throw it away when they leave the Bay Area.
However, launching the open payment system at only one operator has drawbacks. A visitor to the Bay Area who uses a credit card to take BART from San Francisco Airport to Powell Street station may wind up buying a Clipper card anyway, in order to ride the cable car.
Open payments could present other complications such as 'card clash,' when reader devices at fare gates detect more than one type of card, and get confused, Weinstein said. Riders can avoid this problem by taking their cards out of their wallets to tap in.
