Clipper should offer cards in different formats, like Keychain tokens.
Credit Cards should be processed instantly, not over five days.
B
Brian Stanke
12 years ago
All of these upgrades and more are already implemented in Germany metro areas. These involve multiple operators and counties in a Federal system.
In addition, the next generation Clipper should form one statewide system. It should work with Sacramento, San Diego and Los Angeles metro area transit cards and with Amtrak California and CA High Speed Rail services. If not immediately, all the agencies should jointly plan their next generation systems to work together.
Look at iBeacon and similar technologies as well to make it easy with a mobile phone, no special card needed. In 10 years all mobiles will be smartphones.
A
Anonymous
12 years ago
Work with CalTrain to change to a distance-based fare. It shouldn't cost me nearly 60% more to go one more stop. (staying in one zone is $3, one station into the next zone makes it $5.)
E
Eileen Menteer
12 years ago
Possible to have a card anonymously. Won't buy one until that's possible.
A
Anonymous
12 years ago
monthly pass holders should not be required to tag on/off at the beginning of each month; further fix your bugs so that you don't incur extra fees because your apparatus won't let you tag off when you try to do that monthly tag on/off thing
S
Scott Stanton
12 years ago
Featured
Please make the clipper system accessible to blind users at the stations. At a minimum, make it possible for visually impaired riders to hear the same information that everyone else sees on the screen. Even better, connect the system to a mobile app so they can check and update balances with an iPhone.
J
Jonathan Dirrenbergeger
12 years ago
Caltrain monthly passes are a utter pain to deal with. Why do we need to tag on at the beginning of the month? Why can't the system just automatically activate the pass on the first of the month? If you only have to tag on once a month (at the beginning of the month to activate the pass), it's really hard to remember to do this since you don't have to do it the other 29 days of the month. And so you forget, and then you get hammered with a several-hundred dollar fine.
Also, get rid of the 8-ride and make it a 10-ride. The 8-ride is the product of a bygone area when Caltrain used to have paper tickets that got punched and there were only 4 corners per ticket. But since it's digital now, just make it an even two workweeks, or 10 days.
And 8-rides expiring every month is ridiculous. They should last for much longer, at least 6 months. The one-month expiration is a scam and unnecessarily difficult to deal with if you are switching between monthly passes and 8-rides from month to month based on a changing schedule.
E
Eli Mantel
12 years ago
If you were unable to use the monthly pass (or for whatever reason you didn't use it at all during the month), then supposedly you should get a refund or credit of the amount paid for the pass. If that didn't happen to you, check with Clipper customer service. And if that doesn't work, I'd suggest sending a "demand letter" for your refund.
S
Stephen Rock
12 years ago
1) Make it easier to get senior clipper cards. Now only a very few places issue them.
2) Make it easier to get credit if I forget to tag off at a Cal Train station. e.g. I get off train in SF and forget to tag off. I get on a trolly or bus outside the station and use the Clipper Card. That should automatically tag me off the train.
3) Make CalTrain fares more equitable. Cost should be approximately proportional to distance. Now you can travel several stations within a district for less money than a trip between two adjacent stations on the zone boundaries.
4) Same clipper card for parking garages as for transit.
5) Faster on-line adding of money to clipper. It should not take several days for a computer to record information.
S
Stephen Rock
12 years ago
1) Make it easier to get senior clipper cards. Now only a very few places issue them.
2) Make it easier to get credit if I forget to tag off at a Cal Train station. e.g. I get off train in SF and forget to tag off. I get on a trolly or bus outside the station and use the Clipper Card. That should automatically tag me off the train.
3) Make CalTrain fares more equitable. Cost should be approximately proportional to distance. Now you can travel several stations within a district for less money than a trip between two adjacent stations on the zone boundaries.
4) Same clipper card for parking garages as for transit.
5) Faster on-line adding of money to clipper. It should not take several days for a computer to record information.
J
Jame Ervin
12 years ago
Regional day or week pass, easier reload of clipper cards
A
Anonymous
12 years ago
Consider use for bike share, bike lockers, vending machines, station retail vendors, and newspaper kiosks. It would be great it Caltrain had onboard vending machines that could take Clipper as payment. An app to show balance, upload money, etc. would be great. Capitol Corridor should be included as well. What about Zip Car and other such services? Integrate, integrate, integrate!
A
Anonymous
12 years ago
Eliminate the tag on/ tag off requirement for monthly pass holders-- just make them non- refundable after the 10th of the month instead.
A
Anonymous
12 years ago
Transfer between agencies
M
Mario Ramirez
12 years ago
An affordable and flexible regional day and monthly pass system please.
M
Michael Murphy
12 years ago
I also use my card for rides onthe SF Bay Ferry system. In addition to regional fares charged per linked trip (transfers included), use of the card for retail purchases at rail and ferry terminals will be helpful. The Octopus card in Hong Kong has this helpful feature, and will come in handy in the Bay Area. Additional improvements: use for fares on the trains to Sacramento and San Joaquin.
G
Greg Hensley
12 years ago
Easier transfers. Consistent pricing.
I
Ignatius Darren Gozali
12 years ago
caltrain cant add value now when my clipper is close to 0 and thus cant load my monthly pass
E
Eugene Bradley
12 years ago
(question from one of my group members without Facebook access):
I just read your petition about an hour ago. I agree with some of the points you made, such as added cash value always being available for immediate use and Clipper also working for bike-share and bike lockers. But before I sign your petition, I'd like to see answers to questions I have about some of the other points you made, because I know how important details are.
* What do you mean by universal transfers? This sounds good, but I'd like to know how it would apply to specific agencies' current fare policies (like SamTrans, VTA, S.F. Muni, and Golden Gate Transit). Also, is this referring to intra-agency transfers or inter-agency transfers?
* What do you mean by regional passes? Would this be equivalent to what I noticed on a limited basis when I lived in the L.A. metro area from 1992 to 1996? I'm referring to multiple specific agencies coordinating with each other to offer a pass that works on the systems of all such agencies coordinating with each other. For example, Long Beach Transit and LACMTA coordinated to offer a joint monthly pass good on the local routes of both agencies' systems for the month indicated; I bought & used this joint pass some months. Foothill Transit and LACMTA also coordinated to offer joint monthly passes for local routes as well as certain express routes of both systems (which express routes depended on which option the user bought). But note that not all agencies coordinated like this.
* What do you mean by rational distance or zone fares? I've noticed that one system here in the Bay Area (BART) has distance-based fares, certain other systems here (like CalTrain and Golden Gate Transit) have zone-based fares, but most systems here (like VTA and S.F. Muni) don't have either. How would this apply to each such type of system?
Thank you in advance for providing detailed answers to each of my questions here.
- Michael Ludwig
S
Steven Judd
12 years ago
Featured
Clipper needs to act more as an enhancement to a credit/debit card, or act in place of one to be truly effective. Most of the population in the area has a bank account or a payment card of some kind, and other countries have integrated these payment systems together. When these systems can come together, there will be no limits to what Clipper can achieve!
Clipper should offer cards in different formats, like Keychain tokens. Credit Cards should be processed instantly, not over five days.
All of these upgrades and more are already implemented in Germany metro areas. These involve multiple operators and counties in a Federal system. In addition, the next generation Clipper should form one statewide system. It should work with Sacramento, San Diego and Los Angeles metro area transit cards and with Amtrak California and CA High Speed Rail services. If not immediately, all the agencies should jointly plan their next generation systems to work together. Look at iBeacon and similar technologies as well to make it easy with a mobile phone, no special card needed. In 10 years all mobiles will be smartphones.
Work with CalTrain to change to a distance-based fare. It shouldn't cost me nearly 60% more to go one more stop. (staying in one zone is $3, one station into the next zone makes it $5.)
Possible to have a card anonymously. Won't buy one until that's possible.
monthly pass holders should not be required to tag on/off at the beginning of each month; further fix your bugs so that you don't incur extra fees because your apparatus won't let you tag off when you try to do that monthly tag on/off thing
Please make the clipper system accessible to blind users at the stations. At a minimum, make it possible for visually impaired riders to hear the same information that everyone else sees on the screen. Even better, connect the system to a mobile app so they can check and update balances with an iPhone.
Caltrain monthly passes are a utter pain to deal with. Why do we need to tag on at the beginning of the month? Why can't the system just automatically activate the pass on the first of the month? If you only have to tag on once a month (at the beginning of the month to activate the pass), it's really hard to remember to do this since you don't have to do it the other 29 days of the month. And so you forget, and then you get hammered with a several-hundred dollar fine. Also, get rid of the 8-ride and make it a 10-ride. The 8-ride is the product of a bygone area when Caltrain used to have paper tickets that got punched and there were only 4 corners per ticket. But since it's digital now, just make it an even two workweeks, or 10 days. And 8-rides expiring every month is ridiculous. They should last for much longer, at least 6 months. The one-month expiration is a scam and unnecessarily difficult to deal with if you are switching between monthly passes and 8-rides from month to month based on a changing schedule.
If you were unable to use the monthly pass (or for whatever reason you didn't use it at all during the month), then supposedly you should get a refund or credit of the amount paid for the pass. If that didn't happen to you, check with Clipper customer service. And if that doesn't work, I'd suggest sending a "demand letter" for your refund.
1) Make it easier to get senior clipper cards. Now only a very few places issue them. 2) Make it easier to get credit if I forget to tag off at a Cal Train station. e.g. I get off train in SF and forget to tag off. I get on a trolly or bus outside the station and use the Clipper Card. That should automatically tag me off the train. 3) Make CalTrain fares more equitable. Cost should be approximately proportional to distance. Now you can travel several stations within a district for less money than a trip between two adjacent stations on the zone boundaries. 4) Same clipper card for parking garages as for transit. 5) Faster on-line adding of money to clipper. It should not take several days for a computer to record information.
1) Make it easier to get senior clipper cards. Now only a very few places issue them. 2) Make it easier to get credit if I forget to tag off at a Cal Train station. e.g. I get off train in SF and forget to tag off. I get on a trolly or bus outside the station and use the Clipper Card. That should automatically tag me off the train. 3) Make CalTrain fares more equitable. Cost should be approximately proportional to distance. Now you can travel several stations within a district for less money than a trip between two adjacent stations on the zone boundaries. 4) Same clipper card for parking garages as for transit. 5) Faster on-line adding of money to clipper. It should not take several days for a computer to record information.
Regional day or week pass, easier reload of clipper cards
Consider use for bike share, bike lockers, vending machines, station retail vendors, and newspaper kiosks. It would be great it Caltrain had onboard vending machines that could take Clipper as payment. An app to show balance, upload money, etc. would be great. Capitol Corridor should be included as well. What about Zip Car and other such services? Integrate, integrate, integrate!
Eliminate the tag on/ tag off requirement for monthly pass holders-- just make them non- refundable after the 10th of the month instead.
Transfer between agencies
An affordable and flexible regional day and monthly pass system please.
I also use my card for rides onthe SF Bay Ferry system. In addition to regional fares charged per linked trip (transfers included), use of the card for retail purchases at rail and ferry terminals will be helpful. The Octopus card in Hong Kong has this helpful feature, and will come in handy in the Bay Area. Additional improvements: use for fares on the trains to Sacramento and San Joaquin.
Easier transfers. Consistent pricing.
caltrain cant add value now when my clipper is close to 0 and thus cant load my monthly pass
(question from one of my group members without Facebook access): I just read your petition about an hour ago. I agree with some of the points you made, such as added cash value always being available for immediate use and Clipper also working for bike-share and bike lockers. But before I sign your petition, I'd like to see answers to questions I have about some of the other points you made, because I know how important details are. * What do you mean by universal transfers? This sounds good, but I'd like to know how it would apply to specific agencies' current fare policies (like SamTrans, VTA, S.F. Muni, and Golden Gate Transit). Also, is this referring to intra-agency transfers or inter-agency transfers? * What do you mean by regional passes? Would this be equivalent to what I noticed on a limited basis when I lived in the L.A. metro area from 1992 to 1996? I'm referring to multiple specific agencies coordinating with each other to offer a pass that works on the systems of all such agencies coordinating with each other. For example, Long Beach Transit and LACMTA coordinated to offer a joint monthly pass good on the local routes of both agencies' systems for the month indicated; I bought & used this joint pass some months. Foothill Transit and LACMTA also coordinated to offer joint monthly passes for local routes as well as certain express routes of both systems (which express routes depended on which option the user bought). But note that not all agencies coordinated like this. * What do you mean by rational distance or zone fares? I've noticed that one system here in the Bay Area (BART) has distance-based fares, certain other systems here (like CalTrain and Golden Gate Transit) have zone-based fares, but most systems here (like VTA and S.F. Muni) don't have either. How would this apply to each such type of system? Thank you in advance for providing detailed answers to each of my questions here. - Michael Ludwig
Clipper needs to act more as an enhancement to a credit/debit card, or act in place of one to be truly effective. Most of the population in the area has a bank account or a payment card of some kind, and other countries have integrated these payment systems together. When these systems can come together, there will be no limits to what Clipper can achieve!