Updates: Clipper Card Acceptance on Ferries & Napa-Solano, Union City, & Marin Buses

Greetings everyone! Yes, I'm alive after not blogging as regularly as I should. Things have been quite busy in my personal life for the past few weeks, from going on a diet to joining a bowling league and practicing at the lanes with my co-workers.

Let's get on with Clipper card news:

The MTC's Operations Committee met on Friday, February 17th to discuss new matters about Clipper.

Next Phase of Clipper
Clipper's next step is to expand into the smaller transit agencies. In their minutes from their previous meeting, it is expected the Bay Area ferries will be joining the Clipper card family as early as April 2012. The month mentioned did not say if there's any testing time or exactly when it will be available for public use.

The next transit agencies to join Clipper will be the Napa-Solano group, Union City Transit, and Marin Transit. They were chosen because of the limited amount of Clipper equipment remaining in their arsenal, and their connectivity to other participating agencies using Clipper; for example, Union City Transit connects to BART and AC Transit, two major companies part of the Clipper consortium. Clipper expects equipment to be installed in the next 8-9 months, and should be ready for public use by March or April 2013.

In other Clipper card news
The committee is seeking to approve a contract amendment of $30,000 to the contractors running the Embarcadero station's Clipper card kiosk (this would raise their annual contract to $1,087,100). Statistically, that particular location is the top seller of Clipper card value (e-cash), and with their secondary location at the Ferry Building, has sold over 26,000 new Clipper cards (more than half are youth & senior cards), and replaced over 9,000 inoperable cards. The MTC is considering to give them more money to increase their staffing levels and expand their service hours.

Lastly, Clipper is asking the MTC to approve some changes to the operating rules of Clipper. It's a huge document to read over and I don't know exactly what they are changing. One interesting and particular rule in the operating rules is on page 27 about fees: Clipper can charge a passenger a $5 fee for every second failed Autoload funding source when it is declined.

Akit's Opinions
I think it's going to take some time for new agencies to join the Clipper consortium. You are at least looking at one year just to get the next fleet of buses up and running; as for the ferries, I'd expect them to get ready for public usage by around late Summer or early Fall 2012.

For the 30K additional to run the customer service kiosks with more service hours is a good thing. The lines themselves are long and they are quite popular for the incompetent people who doesn't realize a good number of the kiosk's functions can be done quickly at a self-service machine just feet away from the kiosk.

Clipper Card's Next Stop: East Bay Commuter Ferry Boats

My prediction came true just yesterday when the MTC released word about their next steps to extend Clipper. Clipper will now expand to the WETA (Water Emergency Transportation Authority) ferry boat services by installing the technology at their five ferry boat terminals/docks for the routes they operate.

The five terminals are:

1. Oakland - Jack London Square
2. Alameda
3. Harbor Bay
4. San Francisco's Ferry Building
5. San Francisco's Pier 41

The ferry services:

1. Oakland/Alameda Ferry
   
2. Harbor Bay Ferry
3. Oakland/South SF Ferry (new service in 2012)
   

WETA is going to pay $625K and with the new South San Francisco ferry service coming soon, that made the MTC's Operations Committee jump them forward to be first in line for Clipper installation. It may be possible that Clipper could also be done on the Vallejo BayLink ferry, but at this point WETA is not under control of that service until negotiations are completed.

When this project is completed, Clipper will be on nearly all commuter ferry boat services; Golden Gate Ferry, which is not under WETA, has been a member and participant in the Clipper consortium ever since the pilot program a decade ago.

Akit's Opinion
Going with WETA is a very good choice and would be my prime choice for next installation. Their funding dedication towards installation is a big push, and since MTC and Cubic doesn't have enough Clipper readers to install on huge bus fleets, they can take advantage of the ones they have in stock to be at the WETA ferry docks (compare 100 card readers for buses vs. ten card readers for all WETA ferry terminals).

By completing WETA, it will now be available on almost all publicly owned commuter ferry services. But it still leaves out these commuter ferry services:

• Vallejo is left out until negotiations are completed.
• Commuter services for the Tiburon and Sausalito ferries by Blue & Gold Fleet are private operations. It is unclear if they will join the Clipper consortium because Clipper is a public program with only public agencies participating, and how will the MTC work out a public-private partnership, especially if tax dollars will pay for private operations or not.

By having Clipper on more ferry routes, it leaves open questions about add value machines and the transfer of "legacy" products to Clipper. Clipper's add value machines are very expensive, unless if they use the old ones they yanked out of all the Muni metro stations (this was prior to the new Muni metro gates and ticketing machines), but I know for sure that some of those ones from Muni are going to three Caltrain stations.

Clipper is more than likely to carry over the legacy paper fare products the agencies are currently using, such as multi ride tickets, passes, and inter-agency transfer agreements (e.g. free ride on Muni), but with Clipper's system so complex with so many operating rules, a simplified fare structure like Golden Gate's automatic discount for e-cash Clipper users would work best.