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

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

#31

Post by alistairSH »

geebee wrote: post #24

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 t…

Wouldn't a time check fix this? Enter/leave within 10 minutes, no charge. Enter/leave outside 10 min window, charge the exclusion fee.

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

#32

Post by abeppu »

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.

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

#33

Post by dragonwriter »

geebee wrote: post #24

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 t…

> Isn't there a hack/scam where you could (in the absence of a same-station charge) pay less or nothing to ride bart?

Well, if you have someone going the opposite route, you could swap tickets at either endpoint (or at a transfer station in between.)

> Is there a possibility that the same-fare charge is kept around to prevent this hack?

I'm pretty sure that's why the excursion fare exists.

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

#35

Post by floren »

xfitm3 wrote: post #34

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

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)

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

#36

Post by tialaramex »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #8
danans wrote: post #5

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 trai…

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.)

In this particular context by the way (enter and exit same station, assume you just tapped in and out as you would normally) LU may actually charge "Same station fare" and the rules are pretty esoteric.

https://tfl.gov.uk/fares/how-to-pay-and-where-to-buy-tickets...

[Edited to add: Stupid web site doesn't have working fragment markers, click "Same Station Exits" near the top... ]

In practice, as it explains elsewhere on the site, these charges are mostly to discourage attempted fare evasion, and if you're a regular user who just does this once in a while it'll delete the journeys after it decides this isn't suspicious after all, otherwise you need to talk to a human if you really didn't travel anywhere.

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

#37

Post by magila »

jonas21 wrote: post #29
etrautmann wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

exactly - it seems braindead obvious to me that there should be a 5-minute window for exiting without charge. Not implementing such an obvious and trivial feature can only be interpreted as deliberately taking money without delivering value for riders because....it's possible?

Until recently, BART used magstripe tickets where all information was stored on the ticket itself. It might not have been possible to implement a time window with that. That doesn't explain why they didn't add this when migrating to the Clipper card, but I feel like "nobody thought to change it" or "we wanted to reduce risk by not introducing changes while migrating" seem like more likely explanations than malice.

I wouldn't call it malice. It's simply a rational decision. BART makes more money with the fee than without, so absent political pressure to discontinue it why would they?

Also, Clipper cards have been around many years. They aren't a recent addition to BART.

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

#38

Post by mateo411 »

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.

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

#39

Post by rahimnathwani »

tialaramex wrote: post #36
rahimnathwani wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

In this particular context by the way (enter and exit same station, assume you just tapped in and out as you would normally) LU may actually charge "Same station fare" and the rules are pretty esoteric. https://tfl.gov.uk/fares/how-to-pay-and-where-to-buy-tickets... [Edited to add: Stupid web site doesn't have working fragment markers, click "Same Station Exits" near the top... ] In practice, as it explains elsewhere…

The 'same station exits' section of that page is fascinating. The great thing is that most people will never need to worry about this, so they discourage fare evasion without inconveniencing honest passengers.

I wonder: if there were better enforcement of fares in San Francisco, would public transport be better? Right now, I almost never use public transport in SF because ~100% of my journeys would take 2x to 3x as long as they do by car. This is very sad for me, having previously lived in two cities with excellent public transport (London and Beijing).

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

#40

Post by scottlawson »

mateo411 wrote: post #38

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 sup…

It says right in the article how often this happens. It's between 0.37% and 0.73% depending on the day.
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