Eighteen years ago, Bill Clinton was in his first term as president, Barry Bonds was packing for his first spring training camp with the San Francisco Giants, and transit users were promised that someday they could use a single card to board any bus or train in the Bay Area.
For riders in Santa Clara County, someday arrives Wednesday.
That's when the Valley Transportation Authority begins selling Clipper cards to riders on its bus and light-rail system, the last major transit line in the region to join the program.
The distinctive blue and white cards are now being used on Caltrain, BART, AC Transit, SamTrans, San Francisco Muni, Golden Gate Ferry and Golden Gate Transit, allowing passengers to transfer without digging in their pockets to buy a second ticket. Clipper users set up a prepaid account, and off they ride.
"Riders won't always be scraping for nickels, dimes and quarters," said VTA General Manager Michael Burns, saying this will remove a huge barrier for potential riders. "It's amazing how many people won't take public transportation because they are not sure how much is the fare, where do they pay the fare or gala bingo big la they covered the fare. They won't have to worry about that with their card."
VTA will phase in the use of Clipper cards. Passengers can electronically put cash into their accounts for immediate use on single-ride tickets Wednesday if they go to VTA offices in San Jose, but if they do this by phone or online, they need to wait three to five working days before there is cash in their account. Monthly passes will be available on March 1.
To use Clipper, a customer touches the card to the Clipper reader on the VTA light-rail platform, or when boarding a bus. The card reader will show the amount charged for the ride and the balance on the account. Riders can add value to their cards automatically from a bank account or credit card.
Bay Areas transit users make about 67.4 million trips per year that involve transfers between different operators, out of a total of 496 million estimated trips.
The Clipper system, which cost $140 million to set up, launched last June, with 63,000 users a day. Now the weekday average is more than 361,000.
One of them is Farhad Merchant of San Francisco, who sometimes takes Caltrain down the Peninsula, where he transfers to light rail in Mountain View. And he uses it on Muni or on BART when going to the East Bay.
"I think it's a great system," said the 24-year-old. "The biggest perks are that I never have to worry about having cash on hand or keep track of paper tickets or transfers. Plus, if I lose my card I can get a replacement for the value."
The card has a series of white triangles set against a blue backdrop, a design intended to remind people of the Clipper ships that once sailed to San Francisco.
The system was initially called Translink and was to have been in operation by 1999. But getting it to work on the major transit lines, with all their different pricing schemes, proved a nightmare.
And there have been glitches in the current rollout. A few BART stations weren't reading the card, and some people were getting free rides when their account had no money in it.
But, at last, a universal transit pass is here.
"It has been a painful and expensive process," said Stuart Cohan, executive director of TransForm, a transit advocacy group in Oakland. "But with all the complaints and the torturous years since it was first proposed, we finally have a system that works, mostly, and it does truly make transit use easier."
