Daily Clipper Card Use Tops the Half-Million Mark

Buoyed by a surge in back-to-school ridership on Bay Area public transit systems, the Clipper® card for the first time hit and surpassed the milestone of a half-million daily boardings on a consistent basis last week, MTC Clipper staff are reporting.

There were 505,000 average daily boardings using the Clipper card on the region’s seven participating transit systems for the week ending August 26, an eight-fold increase from the 63,000 daily boardings logged by MTC’s precursor electronic fare collection system before the introduction of Clipper just over a year ago, in June 2010.

“Transaction volume has been exploding over the last 12 months,” said Jake Avidon, MTC’s senior program coordinator for Clipper.

Spikes in youth boardings on AC Transit and San Francisco Muni helped to push overall traffic past the half-million mark last week, according to Clipper Program Consultant Edward Meng. Muni, AC Transit and BART staged a number of outreach events this summer to sign up youths for the program, with nearly 50,000 Clipper youth cards distributed to date.

Among the seven Bay Area transit operators participating in the Clipper program, San Francisco Muni is leading the charge, with 304,000 average daily boardings using Clipper last week, which equates to almost half of the agency’s nearly 700,000 daily boardings (per the American Public Transportation Association, APTA).

Muni completed migration of its adult monthly passes to Clipper earlier this year. As of this August, Muni completed the smooth transition of its youth monthly pass to Clipper-only, and is on to the next frontier: encouraging customers who use cash for each ride to pay with Clipper (which can carry a cash balance as well as passes).

Meanwhile, over a third of BART’s weekday riders are using Clipper to pay their fares. BART recorded 130,000 average daily boardings using Clipper last week, compared to 360,000 average daily boardings overall (per APTA).

“You don't need (paper) tickets anymore. No small leftover values to consolidate, and magnets are your friend again,” BART points out enthusiastically on its website, alluding to the weaknesses of the old paper-based tickets, which are prone to being disabled by magnets in purse clasps and the like. The website also promotes the convenience of Clipper: “When you get to the fare gate, tag, open and go!”

AC Transit logged nearly 40,000 average daily Clipper boardings last week, out of a total traffic load of 195,000 daily boardings (per APTA), a 20 percent market penetration on that system. 

Also currently participating in Clipper are Golden Gate Transit and Ferry in the North Bay, Sam Trans and Caltrain on the Peninsula, and the Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) in the South Bay.

Overall, there are 900,000 Clipper cards in active use, and Clipper fare payments now account for about a third of the roughly 1.5 million daily transit trips in the Bay Area.

Looking at the big picture, MTC is in the final stages of completing deployment among the region’s major transit operators, which together account for 95 percent of transit ridership in the region. Strategies for expanding the system beyond these seven operators to the region’s remaining 20 or so ferry, bus and rail operators will be discussed at MTC’s Operations Committee meeting on September 9, 2011.

-- Brenda Kahn