New news from the SFMTA/Muni folks, if you love your paper "BART to Muni" transfers you get when you exit the BART system and immediately transfer to Muni metro or the surface vehicles, you are not going to get them anymore starting October 4th.
On October 4th, instead of a paper transfer, all passengers will be required to use a Clipper card to receive their automatic 25 cent discount when transferring to Muni (within one hour) and their return trip to BART on Muni (within 24 hours).
Some basic rules about the transfer with Clipper: It must be the same plastic Clipper card you exited with BART to receive the discount to transfer to Muni and discount for the ride back. Any Muni pass on your card overrides the transfer.
The main reason for this is since the new fare gates are installed, the station agents can't give passengers the discount and the new ticketing machines have no way to accept the coupons. It's just another step to eliminate paper waste with the Clipper program, just like how Golden Gate Ferry stopped giving paper Muni transfers and converted to a Clipper only basis.
Muni's new policy is only effective on BART stations between Embaracadero and Balboa Park. Daly City passengers will still receive the paper yellow transfers for free rides on the 28 and 54 lines.
If you get a chance, get yourself one final paper souvenir/keepsake on October 3rd by riding BART. I know I will since I'm going to the last regular season Giants game that day.
5 comments:
This is a huge inconvenience. I obtain BART HVD tickets through my commuter benefit program at work. They do not offer me a commuter benefits debit card. Hence, since BART HVD tickets are only available on Clipper through autoload, I can't use a Clipper card with BART. When I need to transfer to Muni, I will now have to pay extra!
Another problem with the Muni-BART transfer? If, for some reason, you get on BART in between Muni rides, they steal/cancel your original Muni transfer and make you pay for a $1.75 BART-Muni transfer. This happened to me Friday when I took BART home after running an errand on Muni because Muni was not running. I hopped on a bus from the BART station to where the Muni would have dropped me off and got jacked for the $1.75 transfer, even though it was within an hour of my original Muni ride.
Clipper customer service told me that taking other transit CANCELS your Muni transfer (though she couldn't refer me to where it said that on the website). So, that's a huge difference between a paper transfer and a Clipper cash transfer. They STEAL your transfer away from you.
I recently bought a Muni 10-ride book on my Clipper card. I expected that when I took the Muni, those fares were being subtracted from the ride book.
But yesterday, I was unable to use Clipper to get on the BART; checking w/ customer service today, I found out that if you use Muni within 1.5 hours of exiting BART, it's considered a BART-to-Muni transfer, and instead of subtracting fares from the ride book, they're subtracted from your eCash. When I ran out of eCash, my BART access was cut off, even though I still have $50 in Autoload BART ticket credit right now--because if you have a negative eCash balance, none of your other transit balances are accessible.
Muni fares should get subtracted from the ride book regardless of whether they are BART-to-Muni transfers, and BART credit should be available even if I have a negative eCash balance. It's an especially big problem for folks like me who commute from the East Bay, as most of our Muni use happens right after we get off BART.
How can I draw the appropriate attention to this problem?
Excellent observation jds.
It's a peculiar issue... if you just transferred from BART to ride Muni, it would likely deduct your e-cash than your 10-ride book because the best deal is the e-cash.
Here's how that works:
Each ride out of your ride book costs $2.00.
But using the BART to Muni transfer charges: $1.75, and returning on Muni to ride BART is another $1.75.
The system was made to take advantage of the best deal. In this case, the BART to Muni 25 cent discount supersedes this.
I don't suggest getting the ride books for Muni because each ride costs the exact same as paying in e-cash.
Hey jds,
I had the same exact problem but was unable to find someone with an answer as clear as the one you gave me. I was so confused and missed my train asking people what the problem was. I couldn;t even find the answer on clippercard.com, so thanks for bringing it up here!
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