Clipper card chaos leads to free BART, Muni rides

A Clipper card system glitch Tuesday forced Muni, BART, and other Bay Area transit systems to allow passengers to ride for free on a day when fares were increased across parts of the network.

The Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which runs the Clipper card system, said it did not know what caused the failure.

“We have not identified the problem, but our team at the MTC, from the leadership on down, is working to fix it,” said John Goodwin, a spokesman.

At 10:20 a.m., Cubic said they are rolling out a fix. “Everything should be working within an hour. We have to make the change for each operator, so it takes a little time for the devices to pick up the change,” the company told the MTC.

The outage coincided with scheduled fare increases on Muni, Caltrain, the Golden Gate Ferry, and Golden Gate Transit. Per the changes, effective Tuesday, Muni riders who use the Clipper card or the Muni mobile app pay an extra $0.10 per ride, and the base fare on Caltrain went up by $0.25. Golden Gate Transit and Ferry said “most” fares were up by $0.25.