It's been quite a while since I rode BART (I interned in SF in 2014, and visited briefly again I think in 2015), but I remember noticing that in the list of fares for different stops from the given station you're in, riding to the end of the line was actually cheaper than stopping at the airport (the second-to-last stop IIRC) on one of the lines. Basically, since they knew more people would get off at the airport than the stop past it, they charged more to get off there. I never did ride all the way to the end of the line, but I assumed that they made sure to hike the price from that stop to the airport as well so you couldn't purposely go there, get off, and then reboard to save a few bucks (although I imagine the time spent doing that wouldn't really be worth it to most people anyhow).
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
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wouldn't a time check fix this? Enter/leave within 10 minutes, no charge. Enter/leave outside 10 min window, charge the exclusion fee.
Tap/swipe in with one card, tap swipe out with the same card but don't actually leave. Hand the card to your buddy who swipes in and enters with you. Do the same thing on exit. You can then have as many people as you want travel for the cost of one.
You can trivially jump the fare gates. BART fares are enforced by inspectors checking proof-of-payment; if your group was stopped they’d be caught out by only having one card with an active trip.
Re: BART’s excursion fare: Agency earns millions from passengers not riding trains
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wouldn't a time check fix this? Enter/leave within 10 minutes, no charge. Enter/leave outside 10 min window, charge the exclusion fee.
Tap/swipe in with one card, tap swipe out with the same card but don't actually leave. Hand the card to your buddy who swipes in and enters with you. Do the same thing on exit. You can then have as many people as you want travel for the cost of one.
A technological countermeasure would be to make it like an airlock - you have to get through the first set of gates (which won't let you return), and then have to tap your card to pass the second gate to finally exit.
Obviously, this is not a realistic solution - building new exit gates is simply not worth it.
Practically, such behavior if done repeatedly can be detected as an anomaly in card usage patterns, and a human reviewer can surely figure out what you're doing.
Re: BART’s excursion fare: Agency earns millions from passengers not riding trains
#74You 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…
Assuming anyone is there, sure. I've changed my mind about BART late at night (next train was delay 30m, going to take an Uber instead) and had no one there to talk to.
Re: BART’s excursion fare: Agency earns millions from passengers not riding trains
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, it's possible (if unusual) to get value out of traveling within the BART system. For example, suppose you have a nice camera you want to sell to a friend. They live in Millbrae and commute to SF by BART. You live in north San Jose. So you agree to meet them on their way home from work, at 6pm right outside the Powell Street station. That's $16.80 for your Berryessa to Powell Street round trip. But what if you m…
They could just let you exit normally and not pay any fare if you entered the station less than 8 minutes ago, or whatever would be an amount of time that you couldn't realistically ride somewhere, enjoy another station, and then ride back. Though I guess people would just tap in, tap out immediately but don't exit the turnstiles, then just get on a train and exit through the emergency exit at whatever station you wa…
"Though I guess people would just tap in, tap out immediately but don't exit the turnstiles, then just get on a train and exit through the emergency exit at whatever station you want for free."
Sure, or just jump the turnstiles and exist through the emergency exit on the other end, which I already see people do frequently.
Re: BART’s excursion fare: Agency earns millions from passengers not riding trains
#76Yes, BART sucks, yada yada yada. In hindsight, not commuting by BART anymore was probably the best fucking decision I'd done for my mental health in my life. That said, charging for ingress / egress from the same station's hardly unique to BART. IIRC, this is true for mass rail transits in Taiwan and Japan as well. I presume it's to discourage non-riders from entering the station and displacing other riders: for real busy stations during rush hour it may be a real concern. That's not the case for BART, though it's got a different kind of "non-riders" to contend with...
Re: BART’s excursion fare: Agency earns millions from passengers not riding trains
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tap/swipe in with one card, tap swipe out with the same card but don't actually leave. Hand the card to your buddy who swipes in and enters with you. Do the same thing on exit. You can then have as many people as you want travel for the cost of one.
A technological countermeasure would be to make it like an airlock - you have to get through the first set of gates (which won't let you return), and then have to tap your card to pass the second gate to finally exit. Obviously, this is not a realistic solution - building new exit gates is simply not worth it. Practically, such behavior if done repeatedly can be detected as an anomaly in card usage patterns, and a hu…
Blocking exit gates are a safety issue even under what would otherwise be normal operating conditions (e.g., no declared threat).
Absent some sort of ranged tag detection (e.g., NFC or RFID), exit determination is exceedingly difficult. I'd argue that NFC/RFID operating beyond a few cm range are themselves a major infosec threat and privacy invasion.
Re: BART’s excursion fare: Agency earns millions from passengers not riding trains
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
"I wouldn't call it _malice_. I make more money robbing travellers on the King's road than not doing so, and it's very unlikely I'll get caught!"
Assuming a value system in which certain acts are wrong even if not observed / punished, some acts can be rational _and_ malicious.
(This isn't intended to say anything either way about BART's actions here, which are obviously not the same as literal robbery; I'm mainly disputing the idea that rational acts can't be malicious.)
Re: BART’s excursion fare: Agency earns millions from passengers not riding trains
#79It's a tax on those that have other transportation options when BART fails
So BART fails, and you decide to leave through the same station. If you just walked through the gates, you get charged ~$7. But BART failed, so wouldn't there be some instruction? Would you not see the many other people leaving via the emergency gate, which doesn't charge you? I'm confused on how the same station fare is a tax on people that have other transportation options. I would agree if you said it's a tax on p…
There's no instruction when there is a delay, besides just wait the 30 minutes or pay the tax and get an Uber
Re: BART’s excursion fare: Agency earns millions from passengers not riding trains
#80A 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…
another frustrating thing about the signs on the platform is how they spend almost the entire time not showing train times
It's almost always showing:
- Elevator updates
- PSAs
- Literally nothing!
Train times are shown for a few seconds at a time! Miss it, and prepare to watch text scroll slowly until the train times popup again for a few seconds. They're also announcing the exact same PSAs audibly, which is great and more accessible anyway.