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When I first moved to SF as a poor grad student doing a summer internship, your Clipper card could go in the negative (for example if you had $2 on it and took

by GuiA 13y ago

When I first moved to SF as a poor grad student doing a summer internship, your Clipper card could go in the negative (for example if you had $2 on it and took a $5 route, you'd be at -$3). Getting a new Clipper card was only something like $1.50; if you took the Caltrain/BART often (expensive routes), it'd almost always be advantageous to buy a clipper card with as little cash on it as possible, toss your card away when it was in the negative and just buy a new one every time. I wish Fast Company had written an article about me at the time :( (and this was "legal" too, whereas the technique described in the article is illegal since you're not allowed to transfer payment titles, per BART's/Muni's policies) (I believe you can't do that anymore - that the maximum negative balance that you can get to is now the same as the price of a new Clipper card)

Zikes 13y ago
I wish Fast Company had written an article about me at the time :( Not enough Big Data.
pavel_lishin 13y ago
I always thought it was pretty grim that Boston's "Charlie Card" was named after a man who was 'trapped' in the subway system because he couldn't afford to pay his way out.
- ars 13y ago
  Charlie is not a real person, it's a song.
  - pavel_lishin 13y ago
    Yeah, I should have made that clearer in my comment. I still think it's a bit morbid.
silencio 13y ago
The minimum balance required to enter is now $1.75, which I think is the minimum BART fare. (The minimums depend on which transit system you use.) You can't go negative at all, so you have to add your fare to the card before you can leave. But a lot of this was due to the fact that they had no Clipper loading capability inside the fare gates as far as I can tell. The signs announcing the change seemed to come up at the same time the old add fare machines were retrofitted with Clipper. On the bright side, BART does offer small discounts based on usage (which only makes sense for a distance-based fare, as opposed to weekly/monthly passes) so there's that.

by GuiA 13y ago

Zikes 13y ago

I wish Fast Company had written an article about me at the time :( Not enough Big Data.

pavel_lishin 13y ago

I always thought it was pretty grim that Boston's "Charlie Card" was named after a man who was 'trapped' in the subway system because he couldn't afford to pay his way out.

ars 13y ago
Charlie is not a real person, it's a song.
- pavel_lishin 13y ago
  Yeah, I should have made that clearer in my comment. I still think it's a bit morbid.

silencio 13y ago

The minimum balance required to enter is now $1.75, which I think is the minimum BART fare. (The minimums depend on which transit system you use.) You can't go negative at all, so you have to add your fare to the card before you can leave. But a lot of this was due to the fact that they had no Clipper loading capability inside the fare gates as far as I can tell. The signs announcing the change seemed to come up at the same time the old add fare machines were retrofitted with Clipper. On the bright side, BART does offer small discounts based on usage (which only makes sense for a distance-based fare, as opposed to weekly/monthly passes) so there's that.