BART didn’t play its cards right
Agency awash in Clipper passes after Warriors parade blunder
When it became clear to anyone but the most clueless Cleveland Cavaliers fan that the Warriors would capture this year’s NBA title, BART prepared to help Oakland throw a big victory parade and bash that would draw fans from all over.
But those good intentions, and some Draymond Green size miscalculations, have left BART officials in a quandary.
Since the June 15 parade and rally, they’ve been sitting on boxes and boxes of Clipper transit cards preloaded with cash value — nearly 38,000 in all, worth more than a halfmillion dollars. And they’re trying to figure out how to sell them to recoup their investment.
The unusual dilemma came about as the Warriors closed in on the team’s second championship in three years, prompting BART officials to work with the Warriors and event planners on the party to come.
With estimates that up to 1.5 million parade-goers would stream into Oakland, BART geared up to carry as many as 600,000 riders downtown, about 40 percent more than the usual daily load. The transit agency knew as well that many people would be BART newcomers or occasional riders whose need to buy paper tickets or Clipper cards might create frustrating jams.
To help them out, BART decided to sell preloaded Clipper cards that would carry
enough cash value to get people to and from downtown Oakland, no matter where they boarded in the system. As a bonus, the plan would get more riders to start using the convenient cards, which is an agency priority.
So BART, with approval from its Board of Directors, ordered 40,000 cards at $15 a pop from Cubic Transportation Systems, which designed the Clipper system. The agency then set up kiosks at 10 stations to sell the cards at $15 each.
But the expected gush of customers was little more than a trickle, and BART ended up vending a little more than 1,000 of the cards.
At subsequent events, including Pride festivities in San Francisco in late June and the opening of a Clipper-only entrance at the downtown Berkeley stations, the agency sold more. As of last week, 2,193 of the cards had been sold, said Chris Filippi, a BART spokesman.
Filippi said BART didn’t know how many people would buy the preloaded Clipper cards — which display the usual logo of eight triangles in two piles, not a special Warriors design — but wanted to be prepared.
BART also wanted to have a stash of preloaded cards on hand for future events that might draw large crowds, he said, and they’ll come in handy as the agency tries to persuade riders to use Clipper cards instead of the system’s paper tickets with a magnetic stripe.
BART officials say Clipper cards, which can be used to access forms of transit across the Bay Area, reduce cash-handling costs and make it quicker and easier to collect fares. Starting in January, BART plans to incentivize Clipper by adding a 50-cent surcharge to every trip taken with a paper ticket.
“I don’t know that we really had expectations of selling a specific number, but we’re really playing the long game on this,” Filippi said. “We want to make sure we move people to Clipper before this surcharge.”
While BART says it didn’t have time for a detailed study of how many Warriors fans would buy the cards, nobody involved in the decision expected such low sales. Officials speculate that some occasional riders were unfamiliar with Clipper cards or preferred the paper tickets, while others didn’t want to pay the surcharge for the transit smart cards.
“The decision to sell the cards made sense,” said Randy Rentschler, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which runs the Clipper program. “I was surprised that they sold so few.”
BART paid Cubic $600,000 for the 40,000 cards, which included $11 of prepaid fares per card, plus the usual $3 Clipper card purchase price — which covers the cost of manufacturing — and a $1 charge to compensate Cubic for loading so many cards in a couple of days.
Generally, people who want to start using Clipper can avoid the $3 fee if they agree to link their account to a credit card or bank account, allowing for automatic payment.
Cubic officials declined to answer questions about whether BART could return the cards and recoup all or some of its investment.
While stripping the cards of their value could be an option, BART officials, including two directors, said they’re confident they’ll get people to buy the preloaded cards — even though they cost a dollar more than a card bought at a machine.
“BART staff is looking for other opportunities, especially as they’re looking to get more people on Clipper and start charging a surcharge in January,” said Rebecca Saltzman, the board president. “They know it is an issue and that they need to sell them. I’m confident they will.”
Rentschler said that while BART has suffered through some well-documented troubles, the transit system did everything it could to handle Warriors fans on parade day and shouldn’t be blamed for overreaching.
“BART went all-out for that parade and for Oakland, and to serve riders.” he said. “BART should get a lot of credit for what they did. Sometimes you’re overprepared, and this was one of those times. I’m still going to give them an A-plus for how they handled that day.”