Cool Clipper Card Statistics & More

The MTC's Operations Committee is meeting this Friday morning and Clipper will be a topic of discussion.

Let's get onto the lead story today, some cool stats from the folks at Clipper:
The documentation from the committee shows a comparison of usage from October 2011, September 2011 (prior month), and October 2010 (page 4 of PDF document). Some are well expected (like the increase of growth and usage), while others show a great improvement in how Clipper is operating:

As of October 2011, Clipper has surpassed the average number of weekday transactions goal of 500,000. The number of transactions has doubled in just one year.
--October 2011: 571,532
--September 2011: 555,273
--October 2010: 226,160

There are over one million active Clipper card accounts as of October 2011. This has nearly tripled in the last 12 months.
--October 2011: 1,058,312
--September 2011: 991,253
--October 201: 315,551

Interestingly, the number of registered Clipper cards has dropped dramatically. Last year, nearly 80% registered their Clipper card for benefits like balance restoration. But with the growth of the Clipper card and people making the decision to use their card anonymously, the number has dropped by nearly half.
--October and September 2011: 43% of Clipper cards in use
--October 2010: 77%

Have you ever wondered, how many people use the autoload program? The statistics show that less than 40% are enrolled in the program, even though the number of users has increased and mandatory enrollment for those who transitioned from BART's EZ Rider HVD ticket program. But while the percentage of users is very slowly growing from a year ago, the number of autoload transactions has doubled.
--October 2011: 39% of cards enrolled w/autoload, 219,568 autoload transactions for month.
--September 2011: 39%, 209,674
--October 2010: 36%, 92,018

Just how many people call customer service in a month? It's over 30,000, but there was a huge spike in September 2011 of phone calls. What's really interesting is that back in October 2010, there was three times less Clipper cards in active use, but maintained the same number of phone calls in comparison to October and September 2011.
--October 2011: 37,820 customer service representative calls
--September 2011: 42,124
--October 2010: 36,051

You may think that's a hell of a lot of phone calls, but if you crunch the numbers, it is actually getting better month by month:
--October 2011: 0.08 customer service calls per unique card used
--September 2011: 0.09
--October 2010: 0.16

In summary: Clipper continues to grow as passes and tickets switch over, but it is good to see people are not calling customer service as often for help. I'm guessing the population is getting used to using their Clipper card, knows where their nearest retailer is, and improved maintenance of the service. In a shameless move, I should also get credit for informing the public too, right?

As for other Clipper related stuff in the committee's agenda...
They are planning to approve to renew contractors for public relations firms. The public relations firms the MTC hires does the publications, promotions, tabling, educating, sign-ups, and others.

Um... can I get a contract too for blogging on Clipper? I'm low cost!

Akit's Opinions
This is just a usual meeting for Clipper. I don't think there will be much new news these days as Clipper advances towards their next goals: Transition of all Samtrans passes and BART HVD tickets to Clipper only.