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BART’s excursion fare: Agency earns millions from passengers not riding trains

143 points by bernardom 4y ago

_hhkc 4y ago
It's a tax on those that have other transportation options when BART fails
- wsinks 4y ago
  So BART fails, and you decide to leave through the same station. If you just walked through the gates, you get charged ~$7. But BART failed, so wouldn't there be some instruction? Would you not see the many other people leaving via the emergency gate, which doesn't charge you? I'm confused on how the same station fare is a tax on people that have other transportation options. I would agree if you said it's a tax on people that accept systems unilaterally.
  - jeffbee 4y ago
    The problem is that as far as the fare card is concerned you are still "inside" the system until you tap out, so you will not be able to re-enter the system if you leave without tapping out through the emergency gate.
  - tonywastaken 4y ago
    There's no instruction when there is a delay, besides just wait the 30 minutes or pay the tax and get an Uber
rdegges 4y ago
This has happened to me on numerous occasions. I’m embarrassed to admit I didn’t even realize it was happening to me for years as it wasn’t until I scrutinized my Clipper transaction history that I noticed it! They should absolutely remove these, totally insane these fees exist in 2022.
darth_avocado 4y ago
One solution here is that you can actually talk to a bart agent and they provide you with a sticker that you can use to get out without tapping. You show the sticker at the next reentry to get in without tapping again. The problem though, more often than not, the agents are missing from their booths. Also doesn’t help if the exit and reentry are two different stations.
- rahimnathwani 4y ago
  "Also doesn’t help if the exit and reentry are two different stations." What about the same station, but on a different day?
- wsinks 4y ago
  That is definitely the problem. And I've dealt with it by being resilient and having more than one way to use the system. A bit of a pain, but there's only one BART and thankfully most others don't operate this way.
- CoffeeOnWrite 4y ago
  > You show the sticker at the next reentry to get in without tapping again I’ve been doing this for years and never seen this. 100% of the time they want to fix the card and peel the sticker off at the outside window, then ask me to tap in at the turnstile.
danans 4y ago
You can go to the kiosk at any BART station and the station attendant will put a sticker on your card to indicate that you are leaving via the same station you entered and allow you to exit via the emergency doors, therefore not incurring the excursion fare. This is in case you decide not to take the train, or forgot something at home. I suspect the excursion fare today is trying to disincentivize the use of the trains and stations as shelters by the unhoused. But others have pointed out that it is to prevent fare hacking, also.
- Lammy 4y ago
  > allow you to exit via the emergency doors If you had to be allowed to exit via emergency doors then they wouldn't be very good emergency doors. They're not going to chase after you :) "Jump the turnstile, never pay the toll / Doo-wah diddy and bust in with the pre-roll"
  - wolfgang42 4y ago
    You can still physically do it even if you’re not allowed to, yes. (There’s at least one other situation where you might be authorized to use the emergency gates sans emergency: a few of the stations have the elevators to the platform outside the paid area for some bizarre reason, so when transiting the station by elevator you have to go through the fare gates and then immediately leave via the emergency exit to get to the train!)
- rahimnathwani 4y ago
  The system will have a record of you entering at one station, but no record of an exit. Will that result in a charge or other problem? (On the London Underground, it would result in a charge, as the system is designed to assume you exited somewhere but somehow managed to leave without tapping out.)
  - wsinks 4y ago
    No - any time you have a problem you talk with a BART agent at the gate and they sort it out for you. Are they not present sometimes? Yes. Are they slow / overrun by people? Sometimes. But that has little to do with the fare.
rajbot 4y ago
Two things about excursion fares: 1. The MUNI "A" Fast Pass doesn't charge excursion fares inside SF. If you commute regularly in SF, the Type A Fast Pass is a great option, especially if you can get a subsidy from work. 2. Otherwise, a Bart attendant can scan your ticket, see that you recently entered and let you out for free, and fix your account so you can get back in without hassle.
thaumasiotes 4y ago
This is a strangely editorialized title. Where did $6.20 come from? The article repeatedly identifies the fee as amounting to $5.75.
- haunter 4y ago
  Article is from 2017, it has been increased since to $6.20 or $6.40 depending on the page you load >BART's Excursion Fare is $6.20 (for a Clipper Card) or $6.70 (regular adult paper ticket). https://www.bart.gov/guide https://www.bart.gov/guide >The excursion fare set on January 1, 2020 is $6.40 for Clipper and $6.90 for paper tickets. https://www.bart.gov/tickets https://www.bart.gov/tickets
kderbyma 4y ago
As someone who is not familiar with this transit system, but familiar with my own....this is criminal ... I would have a fit to be charged for not using the service..... we have a different system. timed tickets....or monthly passes or day passes....wtf is this robbery. no offense...but this is the opposite of free market principles at work...this is straight extortion
- ribosometronome 4y ago
  Free market, extortion, and robbery are not exclusive from each other :) But you're right. Transit like this is rarely the free market at work in the US, though, you're right It's operated by a governmental entity. It's hard to have competing subway systems.
geebee 4y ago
Isn't there a hack/scam where you could (in the absence of a same-station charge) pay less or nothing to ride bart? I remember people talking bout this ages ago (like, 20 years ago). You keep two bart cards going, and use the same one to enter and leave the same station. If there's a same-station charge, you can use it to enter/leave a nearby station, avoiding the higher fee for longer trips. Is there a possibility that the same-fare charge is kept around to prevent this hack?
- alistairSH 4y ago
  Wouldn't a time check fix this? Enter/leave within 10 minutes, no charge. Enter/leave outside 10 min window, charge the exclusion fee.
  - pirocks 4y ago
    Tap/swipe in with one card, tap swipe out with the same card but don't actually leave. Hand the card to your buddy who swipes in and enters with you. Do the same thing on exit. You can then have as many people as you want travel for the cost of one.
    - wolfgang42 4y ago
      You can trivially jump the fare gates. BART fares are enforced by inspectors checking proof-of-payment; if your group was stopped they’d be caught out by only having one card with an active trip.
    - drdaeman 4y ago
      A technological countermeasure would be to make it like an airlock - you have to get through the first set of gates (which won't let you return), and then have to tap your card to pass the second gate to finally exit. Obviously, this is not a realistic solution - building new exit gates is simply not worth it. Practically, such behavior if done repeatedly can be detected as an anomaly in card usage patterns, and a human reviewer can surely figure out what you're doing.
hparadiz 4y ago
These are the kind of little things that make me not want to use public transportation if I can help it. This was common for me in Philly. I'd pay to get onto the station platform then spend 30 minutes waiting for a train that is supposed to come every 10. Then upon realizing it would never come I'd end up with the double penalty of not getting a refund from SEPTA as well as having to pay for an Uber. Only to the get chewed out by my boss at comcast for walking in at 9:45. Meanwhile all the people coming from the suburbs with an hour long delay would get a pass just because they don't live in the city.
abeppu 4y ago
A related really dumb thing is that in general, the signs in BART which indicate the time until the next train on a given line are not visible from outside the fare zone. This is especially relevant in parts of downtown SF, where you could take BART or Muni to go up or down market, and if there's a delay on one, you might quite reasonably want to switch to another. The added time to find the station agent and get an excursion fee waved is more than long enough to miss a muni train. (And needing to see an agent when _re-entering_ the system next time can make you miss a train again.) I especially think that, if there's a service disruption, track maintenance, cancelled train, etc, BART should _automatically_ know not to apply an excursion fee, rather than hoping that most riders won't ask for a station agent to waive it.
- nrp 4y ago
  I think you mean the signs are “only” visible in the fare zone. The canopy improvements project will add signs at the entrances showing times for the stations in SF soon: https://www.bart.gov/about/planning/sfentrances https://www.bart.gov/about/planning/sfentrances
- ProfessorLayton 4y ago
  another frustrating thing about the signs on the platform is how they spend almost the entire time not showing train times It's almost always showing: - Elevator updates - PSAs - Literally nothing! Train times are shown for a few seconds at a time! Miss it, and prepare to watch text scroll slowly until the train times popup again for a few seconds. They're also announcing the exact same PSAs audibly, which is great and more accessible anyway.
xfitm3 4y ago
I'd jump the turnstyles on exit. I am happy to risk the consequences vs paying to leave the station. That's just bananas!
- floren 4y ago
  The problem is that you're still marked as having entered the system, but never exited. So the turnstiles won't let you in next time you try to enter a station, as I understand it. The proper SF solution, based on my observations, is to just jump the turnstiles every time, going in or going out. I've watched guys camped out on the floor shooting up in clear view of the attendant, I assume if that flies they probably won't chase you down for just jumping a turnstile. (Yes, I do pay every time I ride BART, and yes I have been bitten by this stupid goddamn charge, and no there wasn't any attendant at the station to fix it)
  - xfitm3 4y ago
    Ah, of course. Are single use tickets available on bart? Perhaps another workaround?
mateo411 4y ago
How often does this really happen? Maybe once per 2000 rides? It appears there is a way to get your money back although it might be annoying and bureaucratic. I think there are bigger issues we can focus on with BART. The should focus on fixing the signaling so we can get more trains through the Transbay tunnel. We should make BART more reliable and finish the San Jose extension on time and under budget. I'm very supportive complaining about public transit and services in general, but making sure that BART provides excellent service for people who change their mind at the last moment, doesn't seem like the best use of their limited resources.
- scottlawson 4y ago
  It says right in the article how often this happens. It's between 0.37% and 0.73% depending on the day.
- enos_feedler 4y ago
  When I paid for BART parking during free hours I just flagged the transaction on my credit card as "merchant did not provide service" or something to that effect and got my money back. I guess if it involves Clipper card you can't easily do this.
  - CoffeeOnWrite 4y ago
    Clipper has its own way to request a refund. They refund first-time excursion fees no questions asked.
sowbug 4y ago
When I was a kid and tried to figure out why this fare/penalty existed, I guessed it was to compensate for people who traveled somewhere to pick up an item from a friend who'd meet them at the station and hand it through the gate to them, and then they'd go back home, all without leaving the station. It all seemed like an intricate solution to a small problem.
- tedunangst 4y ago
  What makes it intricate? There's a big table of station x station fares. Filling the diagonal with $6 is no more complicated than filling it with $0.
  - sowbug 4y ago
    You're thinking from an implementor's perspective. From the customer's perspective, it's a weird nonlinear pricing model that charges you more to be taken a shorter distance. Honest people who forgot their keys at home or whatever and need to run back home have to deal with the nonlinearity.
- flomo 4y ago
  In ye olden days, my company had a courier who would shuttle interoffice mail between the Walnut Creek and downtown SF offices on BART all day. So I could see this happening.
linuxhansl 4y ago
BART... As I always say: One of the richest parts of the richest state of the richest nation on this planet and we have ... BART. How is this possible?
- troutwine 4y ago
  Because the politics of the rich don't make good infrastructure for common use? So, BART was originally constructed for the purposes of suburban commuters heading into San Francisco for white-collar work with generous no-travel times baked in for maintenance. It's why there's no track duplication: if you're shutting down fully for hours you have plenty of time to work on maintenance. Almost immediately this assumption proved false, the hours got extended but the basic design is still in place. And, if you're really, really rich here you'd pay someone to drive you. Why futz with the BART? All you, the rarefied wealthy, need to do is keep BART limping along just enough that the service workers and middle class white-collar people and what not you rely on can get to work. It's how we get BART, it's how we get a serious housing shortage.
- jokethrowaway 4y ago
  Because it's a public service and it doesn't have incentives to get better. It also has no fair competition from the private sector, given the amount of money in infrastructure that was spent on BART is unmatched. Look at how much private transportation improved (taxis -> uber). Besides, BART is the last of SF's problems, I'd rank homelessness and crime higher.
kepler1 4y ago
It's funny how BART (and most California agencies) put very quantifiable costs on people who obey the rules in a way that you've foreseen, but in the meantime completely ignore farehoppers, freeriders, etc. who simply hop over turnstiles or otherwise don't follow the law. I guess it's too expensive (or "not equitable") to take the time to enforce rules that you've created. And we are too nice to create firm but unpopular rules for things that do come up.
enos_feedler 4y ago
I recently paid for BART parking garage during free hours because there is no sign anywhere that tells you which hours paid parking is enforced. I looked it up after I paid for the spot and realized I didn't need to. I imagined the reason for this was the same. They are making extra money by not informing when you don't need to pay, why change it?
kodah 4y ago
I think this is a really great opportunity to mention that all policies need two important criteria: an audit date, and a mandatory (and renewable) sunset date.
deleted 4y ago
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legitster 4y ago
Oh man, this happened to me on the last trip. Some of the BART layouts and signage are bonkers, and you can easily accidently go through turnstiles for the wrong line. I tried finding someone but there was no staff. I emailed them and no response. I now chalk it up to the "SF hates you" tax I pay every time I visit.
monkeycantype 4y ago
With the old paper tickets there wasn’t a time limit for how long it took to complete a journey, and with careful use of multiple tickets you could travel between sf and east bay and never pay more than the minimum fare. The excursion fare was the only thing stopping you riding for free, I wonder if the excursion fare was a last minute hack to close out a potential exploit.
saghm 4y ago
It's been quite a while since I rode BART (I interned in SF in 2014, and visited briefly again I think in 2015), but I remember noticing that in the list of fares for different stops from the given station you're in, riding to the end of the line was actually cheaper than stopping at the airport (the second-to-last stop IIRC) on one of the lines. Basically, since they knew more people would get off at the airport than the stop past it, they charged more to get off there. I never did ride all the way to the end of the line, but I assumed that they made sure to hike the price from that stop to the airport as well so you couldn't purposely go there, get off, and then reboard to save a few bucks (although I imagine the time spent doing that wouldn't really be worth it to most people anyhow).
RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u 4y ago
Yes, BART sucks, yada yada yada. In hindsight, not commuting by BART anymore was probably the best fucking decision I'd done for my mental health in my life. That said, charging for ingress / egress from the same station's hardly unique to BART. IIRC, this is true for mass rail transits in Taiwan and Japan as well. I presume it's to discourage non-riders from entering the station and displacing other riders: for real busy stations during rush hour it may be a real concern. That's not the case for BART, though it's got a different kind of "non-riders" to contend with...
Kiala 4y ago
In the Netherlands (where I live) most stations have gates. When you check in with ov-chipkaart [1], 10 or 20 euro are debited until you check out and the fare is settled. However, you have 60 minutes to check out at the same station without being charged. Is that so difficult? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OV-chipkaart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OV-chipkaart
HaloZero 4y ago
Janice Li on the BART Board at least is down for removing the fee. Though it might have to wait for 2023 for Clipper 2.0? No idea why. https://twitter.com/JaniceForBART/status/1555034168962138112 https://twitter.com/JaniceForBART/status/1555034168962138112 Rebecca Saltzman (another BART board member) says it's technical execution that prevents the change more so than the board.
jayzalowitz 4y ago
This could be prevented by posting wait times for the next set of trains clearly on the entrances, on most stations is only available inside the gates. New york does this but san francisco hates you, so they dont.
throwaway313313 4y ago
Alooong time ago before this kind of same station exit fee existed, it was very widely know among teenagers that you could buy a ticket with the lowest amount required so that you could exit the station and so what would happen would a bunch of teenagers would buy cheap tickets and then do all kinds of money saving maneuvers such as tail gating their friend or a stranger through the exit gate while holding their ticket in their hand just above the machine etc, so that they did not consume any fare at the far side yet still had a ticket visible and weren't jumping over the gate. It was super widely know and many kids would tour the whole bay area for super cheap on weekends if they had nothing better to do. I'm just saying this is why they came up with that fee. Obviously any adult with a real job wouldn't stoop to such antics.

143 points by bernardom 4y ago

_hhkc 4y ago

It's a tax on those that have other transportation options when BART fails

wsinks 4y ago
So BART fails, and you decide to leave through the same station. If you just walked through the gates, you get charged ~$7. But BART failed, so wouldn't there be some instruction? Would you not see the many other people leaving via the emergency gate, which doesn't charge you? I'm confused on how the same station fare is a tax on people that have other transportation options. I would agree if you said it's a tax on people that accept systems unilaterally.
- jeffbee 4y ago
  The problem is that as far as the fare card is concerned you are still "inside" the system until you tap out, so you will not be able to re-enter the system if you leave without tapping out through the emergency gate.
- tonywastaken 4y ago
  There's no instruction when there is a delay, besides just wait the 30 minutes or pay the tax and get an Uber

rdegges 4y ago

This has happened to me on numerous occasions. I’m embarrassed to admit I didn’t even realize it was happening to me for years as it wasn’t until I scrutinized my Clipper transaction history that I noticed it! They should absolutely remove these, totally insane these fees exist in 2022.

darth_avocado 4y ago

One solution here is that you can actually talk to a bart agent and they provide you with a sticker that you can use to get out without tapping. You show the sticker at the next reentry to get in without tapping again. The problem though, more often than not, the agents are missing from their booths. Also doesn’t help if the exit and reentry are two different stations.

rahimnathwani 4y ago
"Also doesn’t help if the exit and reentry are two different stations." What about the same station, but on a different day?
wsinks 4y ago
That is definitely the problem. And I've dealt with it by being resilient and having more than one way to use the system. A bit of a pain, but there's only one BART and thankfully most others don't operate this way.
CoffeeOnWrite 4y ago
> You show the sticker at the next reentry to get in without tapping again I’ve been doing this for years and never seen this. 100% of the time they want to fix the card and peel the sticker off at the outside window, then ask me to tap in at the turnstile.

danans 4y ago

You can go to the kiosk at any BART station and the station attendant will put a sticker on your card to indicate that you are leaving via the same station you entered and allow you to exit via the emergency doors, therefore not incurring the excursion fare. This is in case you decide not to take the train, or forgot something at home. I suspect the excursion fare today is trying to disincentivize the use of the trains and stations as shelters by the unhoused. But others have pointed out that it is to prevent fare hacking, also.

Lammy 4y ago
> allow you to exit via the emergency doors If you had to be allowed to exit via emergency doors then they wouldn't be very good emergency doors. They're not going to chase after you :) "Jump the turnstile, never pay the toll / Doo-wah diddy and bust in with the pre-roll"
- wolfgang42 4y ago
  You can still physically do it even if you’re not allowed to, yes. (There’s at least one other situation where you might be authorized to use the emergency gates sans emergency: a few of the stations have the elevators to the platform outside the paid area for some bizarre reason, so when transiting the station by elevator you have to go through the fare gates and then immediately leave via the emergency exit to get to the train!)
rahimnathwani 4y ago
The system will have a record of you entering at one station, but no record of an exit. Will that result in a charge or other problem? (On the London Underground, it would result in a charge, as the system is designed to assume you exited somewhere but somehow managed to leave without tapping out.)
- wsinks 4y ago
  No - any time you have a problem you talk with a BART agent at the gate and they sort it out for you. Are they not present sometimes? Yes. Are they slow / overrun by people? Sometimes. But that has little to do with the fare.

rajbot 4y ago

Two things about excursion fares: 1. The MUNI "A" Fast Pass doesn't charge excursion fares inside SF. If you commute regularly in SF, the Type A Fast Pass is a great option, especially if you can get a subsidy from work. 2. Otherwise, a Bart attendant can scan your ticket, see that you recently entered and let you out for free, and fix your account so you can get back in without hassle.

thaumasiotes 4y ago

This is a strangely editorialized title. Where did $6.20 come from? The article repeatedly identifies the fee as amounting to $5.75.

haunter 4y ago
Article is from 2017, it has been increased since to $6.20 or $6.40 depending on the page you load >BART's Excursion Fare is $6.20 (for a Clipper Card) or $6.70 (regular adult paper ticket). https://www.bart.gov/guide https://www.bart.gov/guide >The excursion fare set on January 1, 2020 is $6.40 for Clipper and $6.90 for paper tickets. https://www.bart.gov/tickets https://www.bart.gov/tickets

kderbyma 4y ago

As someone who is not familiar with this transit system, but familiar with my own....this is criminal ... I would have a fit to be charged for not using the service..... we have a different system. timed tickets....or monthly passes or day passes....wtf is this robbery. no offense...but this is the opposite of free market principles at work...this is straight extortion

ribosometronome 4y ago
Free market, extortion, and robbery are not exclusive from each other :) But you're right. Transit like this is rarely the free market at work in the US, though, you're right It's operated by a governmental entity. It's hard to have competing subway systems.

geebee 4y ago

Isn't there a hack/scam where you could (in the absence of a same-station charge) pay less or nothing to ride bart? I remember people talking bout this ages ago (like, 20 years ago). You keep two bart cards going, and use the same one to enter and leave the same station. If there's a same-station charge, you can use it to enter/leave a nearby station, avoiding the higher fee for longer trips. Is there a possibility that the same-fare charge is kept around to prevent this hack?

alistairSH 4y ago
Wouldn't a time check fix this? Enter/leave within 10 minutes, no charge. Enter/leave outside 10 min window, charge the exclusion fee.
- pirocks 4y ago
  Tap/swipe in with one card, tap swipe out with the same card but don't actually leave. Hand the card to your buddy who swipes in and enters with you. Do the same thing on exit. You can then have as many people as you want travel for the cost of one.
  - wolfgang42 4y ago
    You can trivially jump the fare gates. BART fares are enforced by inspectors checking proof-of-payment; if your group was stopped they’d be caught out by only having one card with an active trip.
  - drdaeman 4y ago
    A technological countermeasure would be to make it like an airlock - you have to get through the first set of gates (which won't let you return), and then have to tap your card to pass the second gate to finally exit. Obviously, this is not a realistic solution - building new exit gates is simply not worth it. Practically, such behavior if done repeatedly can be detected as an anomaly in card usage patterns, and a human reviewer can surely figure out what you're doing.

hparadiz 4y ago

These are the kind of little things that make me not want to use public transportation if I can help it. This was common for me in Philly. I'd pay to get onto the station platform then spend 30 minutes waiting for a train that is supposed to come every 10. Then upon realizing it would never come I'd end up with the double penalty of not getting a refund from SEPTA as well as having to pay for an Uber. Only to the get chewed out by my boss at comcast for walking in at 9:45. Meanwhile all the people coming from the suburbs with an hour long delay would get a pass just because they don't live in the city.

abeppu 4y ago

A related really dumb thing is that in general, the signs in BART which indicate the time until the next train on a given line are not visible from outside the fare zone. This is especially relevant in parts of downtown SF, where you could take BART or Muni to go up or down market, and if there's a delay on one, you might quite reasonably want to switch to another. The added time to find the station agent and get an excursion fee waved is more than long enough to miss a muni train. (And needing to see an agent when _re-entering_ the system next time can make you miss a train again.) I especially think that, if there's a service disruption, track maintenance, cancelled train, etc, BART should _automatically_ know not to apply an excursion fee, rather than hoping that most riders won't ask for a station agent to waive it.

nrp 4y ago
I think you mean the signs are “only” visible in the fare zone. The canopy improvements project will add signs at the entrances showing times for the stations in SF soon: https://www.bart.gov/about/planning/sfentrances https://www.bart.gov/about/planning/sfentrances
ProfessorLayton 4y ago
another frustrating thing about the signs on the platform is how they spend almost the entire time not showing train times It's almost always showing: - Elevator updates - PSAs - Literally nothing! Train times are shown for a few seconds at a time! Miss it, and prepare to watch text scroll slowly until the train times popup again for a few seconds. They're also announcing the exact same PSAs audibly, which is great and more accessible anyway.

xfitm3 4y ago

I'd jump the turnstyles on exit. I am happy to risk the consequences vs paying to leave the station. That's just bananas!

floren 4y ago
The problem is that you're still marked as having entered the system, but never exited. So the turnstiles won't let you in next time you try to enter a station, as I understand it. The proper SF solution, based on my observations, is to just jump the turnstiles every time, going in or going out. I've watched guys camped out on the floor shooting up in clear view of the attendant, I assume if that flies they probably won't chase you down for just jumping a turnstile. (Yes, I do pay every time I ride BART, and yes I have been bitten by this stupid goddamn charge, and no there wasn't any attendant at the station to fix it)
- xfitm3 4y ago
  Ah, of course. Are single use tickets available on bart? Perhaps another workaround?

mateo411 4y ago

How often does this really happen? Maybe once per 2000 rides? It appears there is a way to get your money back although it might be annoying and bureaucratic. I think there are bigger issues we can focus on with BART. The should focus on fixing the signaling so we can get more trains through the Transbay tunnel. We should make BART more reliable and finish the San Jose extension on time and under budget. I'm very supportive complaining about public transit and services in general, but making sure that BART provides excellent service for people who change their mind at the last moment, doesn't seem like the best use of their limited resources.

scottlawson 4y ago
It says right in the article how often this happens. It's between 0.37% and 0.73% depending on the day.
enos_feedler 4y ago
When I paid for BART parking during free hours I just flagged the transaction on my credit card as "merchant did not provide service" or something to that effect and got my money back. I guess if it involves Clipper card you can't easily do this.
- CoffeeOnWrite 4y ago
  Clipper has its own way to request a refund. They refund first-time excursion fees no questions asked.

sowbug 4y ago

When I was a kid and tried to figure out why this fare/penalty existed, I guessed it was to compensate for people who traveled somewhere to pick up an item from a friend who'd meet them at the station and hand it through the gate to them, and then they'd go back home, all without leaving the station. It all seemed like an intricate solution to a small problem.

tedunangst 4y ago
What makes it intricate? There's a big table of station x station fares. Filling the diagonal with $6 is no more complicated than filling it with $0.
- sowbug 4y ago
  You're thinking from an implementor's perspective. From the customer's perspective, it's a weird nonlinear pricing model that charges you more to be taken a shorter distance. Honest people who forgot their keys at home or whatever and need to run back home have to deal with the nonlinearity.
flomo 4y ago
In ye olden days, my company had a courier who would shuttle interoffice mail between the Walnut Creek and downtown SF offices on BART all day. So I could see this happening.

linuxhansl 4y ago

BART... As I always say: One of the richest parts of the richest state of the richest nation on this planet and we have ... BART. How is this possible?

troutwine 4y ago
Because the politics of the rich don't make good infrastructure for common use? So, BART was originally constructed for the purposes of suburban commuters heading into San Francisco for white-collar work with generous no-travel times baked in for maintenance. It's why there's no track duplication: if you're shutting down fully for hours you have plenty of time to work on maintenance. Almost immediately this assumption proved false, the hours got extended but the basic design is still in place. And, if you're really, really rich here you'd pay someone to drive you. Why futz with the BART? All you, the rarefied wealthy, need to do is keep BART limping along just enough that the service workers and middle class white-collar people and what not you rely on can get to work. It's how we get BART, it's how we get a serious housing shortage.
jokethrowaway 4y ago
Because it's a public service and it doesn't have incentives to get better. It also has no fair competition from the private sector, given the amount of money in infrastructure that was spent on BART is unmatched. Look at how much private transportation improved (taxis -> uber). Besides, BART is the last of SF's problems, I'd rank homelessness and crime higher.

kepler1 4y ago

It's funny how BART (and most California agencies) put very quantifiable costs on people who obey the rules in a way that you've foreseen, but in the meantime completely ignore farehoppers, freeriders, etc. who simply hop over turnstiles or otherwise don't follow the law. I guess it's too expensive (or "not equitable") to take the time to enforce rules that you've created. And we are too nice to create firm but unpopular rules for things that do come up.

enos_feedler 4y ago

I recently paid for BART parking garage during free hours because there is no sign anywhere that tells you which hours paid parking is enforced. I looked it up after I paid for the spot and realized I didn't need to. I imagined the reason for this was the same. They are making extra money by not informing when you don't need to pay, why change it?

kodah 4y ago

I think this is a really great opportunity to mention that all policies need two important criteria: an audit date, and a mandatory (and renewable) sunset date.

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legitster 4y ago

Oh man, this happened to me on the last trip. Some of the BART layouts and signage are bonkers, and you can easily accidently go through turnstiles for the wrong line. I tried finding someone but there was no staff. I emailed them and no response. I now chalk it up to the "SF hates you" tax I pay every time I visit.

monkeycantype 4y ago

With the old paper tickets there wasn’t a time limit for how long it took to complete a journey, and with careful use of multiple tickets you could travel between sf and east bay and never pay more than the minimum fare. The excursion fare was the only thing stopping you riding for free, I wonder if the excursion fare was a last minute hack to close out a potential exploit.

saghm 4y ago

It's been quite a while since I rode BART (I interned in SF in 2014, and visited briefly again I think in 2015), but I remember noticing that in the list of fares for different stops from the given station you're in, riding to the end of the line was actually cheaper than stopping at the airport (the second-to-last stop IIRC) on one of the lines. Basically, since they knew more people would get off at the airport than the stop past it, they charged more to get off there. I never did ride all the way to the end of the line, but I assumed that they made sure to hike the price from that stop to the airport as well so you couldn't purposely go there, get off, and then reboard to save a few bucks (although I imagine the time spent doing that wouldn't really be worth it to most people anyhow).

RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u 4y ago

Yes, BART sucks, yada yada yada. In hindsight, not commuting by BART anymore was probably the best fucking decision I'd done for my mental health in my life. That said, charging for ingress / egress from the same station's hardly unique to BART. IIRC, this is true for mass rail transits in Taiwan and Japan as well. I presume it's to discourage non-riders from entering the station and displacing other riders: for real busy stations during rush hour it may be a real concern. That's not the case for BART, though it's got a different kind of "non-riders" to contend with...

Kiala 4y ago

In the Netherlands (where I live) most stations have gates. When you check in with ov-chipkaart [1], 10 or 20 euro are debited until you check out and the fare is settled. However, you have 60 minutes to check out at the same station without being charged. Is that so difficult? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OV-chipkaart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OV-chipkaart

HaloZero 4y ago

Janice Li on the BART Board at least is down for removing the fee. Though it might have to wait for 2023 for Clipper 2.0? No idea why. https://twitter.com/JaniceForBART/status/1555034168962138112 https://twitter.com/JaniceForBART/status/1555034168962138112 Rebecca Saltzman (another BART board member) says it's technical execution that prevents the change more so than the board.

jayzalowitz 4y ago

This could be prevented by posting wait times for the next set of trains clearly on the entrances, on most stations is only available inside the gates. New york does this but san francisco hates you, so they dont.

throwaway313313 4y ago

Alooong time ago before this kind of same station exit fee existed, it was very widely know among teenagers that you could buy a ticket with the lowest amount required so that you could exit the station and so what would happen would a bunch of teenagers would buy cheap tickets and then do all kinds of money saving maneuvers such as tail gating their friend or a stranger through the exit gate while holding their ticket in their hand just above the machine etc, so that they did not consume any fare at the far side yet still had a ticket visible and weren't jumping over the gate. It was super widely know and many kids would tour the whole bay area for super cheap on weekends if they had nothing better to do. I'm just saying this is why they came up with that fee. Obviously any adult with a real job wouldn't stoop to such antics.