KQED Investigates Botched Clipper 2.0 Launch

Last December, Bay Area transit officials launched Clipper 2.0 – a revamp of the payment system used across the region’s 22 public transportation systems. The new version was supposed to allow seamless rides between systems and coordinate discounts and other programs. But its rollout turned out to be a bumpy ride that was riddled with errors including payments not being credited, account software locking out customers and system-wide outages lasting hours. KQED’s Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman joins us to talk about his investigation into what went wrong and what’s next for Clipper.

Guests:

• Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman, reporter, KQED News
• Adina Levin, executive director, Seamless Bay Area
• Sarah Syed, board member representing the City of Alameda and portions of Oakland and San Leandro, AC Transit Board of Directors
• Andrew Fremier, executive director, Metropolitan Transportation Commission

This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.

Alexis Madrigal: Welcome to Forum. I’m Alexis Madrigal. Last December, Bay Area transit officials launched Clipper 2.0, a revamp of the payment system used across the region’s public transportation systems that had been in the works for years. The new version was supposed to allow seamless rides between systems, handle discounts more elegantly, and include new features. But its rollout turned out to be a bumpy ride that was riddled with errors, including payments not being credited, account software locking out customers, system-wide outages lasting hours. Listen.

KQED’s Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman has been reporting on the Clipper problems, and he joins us this morning. Welcome.

Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: Hey, Alexis.

Alexis Madrigal: So just give us a little more detail. Clipper 2.0 — what was the sort of idea? People probably know Clipper as, like, a little card that they had that allowed them to tap into different transit stations. So what was Clipper 2.0, and how was it supposed to be different?

Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: Yeah, Clipper 2, also known as Next Generation Clipper, is basically this major update for Clipper, which is the Bay Area’s fare payment system for public transit. It’s used by 22 different transit agencies in the region. And basically, what this was was about bringing it into, like, modern-day fare payment software, updating it to the current day.

Because when was Clipper first launched? 2009.

Alexis Madrigal: Yeah, all right. So this is, like, an era where, like, you know, people barely had smartphones. The cloud software was what all the billboards on 101 were about. This is a long time ago.

Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: Yeah, yeah. They got the contract in 2009, launched 2010. And so this was about, like, really making Clipper a better product for transit riders.

So Clipper 2 basically took Clipper from what’s called, like, a card-based system, where all your information is stored on a card, and turned it into, like, an account-based system. And that meant you could just store a lot more information in people’s accounts. So people could get, you know, better discounts. Like, you could apply for youth or senior discounts, and that information could be stored on your card.

Also, Clipper 2 brought reduced or free transfers, and there was also going to be, like, event promotions. So, like, let’s say if you’re taking VTA to the World Cup, you know, you can get, like, some kind of promotion that makes it cheaper and kind of incentivizes transit.

Alexis Madrigal: So it’s also part of the overall goal of, I think, many transit advocates and MTC itself to kind of knit together the infrastructure of our area out of these 22 different transit agencies, right?

Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: Kind of. The idea of Clipper is to make riding transit in the Bay Area sort of seamless, a word that’s used a lot in the Bay Area transit parlance, right? So if you’re transferring from Bay Area — from BART to Muni or whatever — it’s like you don’t even notice your transfer.

Alexis Madrigal: Right, right. They’re trying to reverse-engineer a system that maybe we should have built like 40 years ago. So, this thing launches in December. You know, there, of course, we did have the World Cup coming, we have all these things happening. Did it feel like the timing was driven by the system being ready, or that we had these big events coming up?

Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: Well, yeah, well, we should say first that, like, you know, Clipper 2 launched December 2025, but that’s around three years later than its original launch date. And, you know, Clipper 2, the original contract was given in 2018. So this has been a long time coming.

Um, there was a desire in sort of Bay Area transit to get Clipper 2 up and running before the Super Bowl and the World Cup came to town. You know, in order to get all these fans to games, you know, we need a modern transit system. You know, like, I don’t know if you’ve ridden an OMNY in New York City, but, you know, tap to pay with a credit card. That’s huge.

That was one of the big things with Clipper 2: now, you know, BART piloted it first, but now tap to pay with a credit card was gonna be at all the transit agencies where you get Clipper. So just making it really easy for visitors to use the system.

Alexis Madrigal: Right, right. So we didn’t have to go find a kiosk, buy a card, wait in line, do all these things. So yes, we have this, and we’re gonna get to a lot more about the specifics of the contract, why this took so long, all these things. But if you were just a rider in December, what were some of the problems that people encountered when this rollout began?

Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: Yeah, so right from the jump, there were kind of a host of problems that popped up. So first and foremost, people were locked out of their accounts. So if you were trying to access your Clipper account via the website or the app, you couldn’t get in. And your money is locked in that account. So you’re actually, not only can you not get into the account, but you can’t access the money that you’ve squirreled away to ride transit.

Other problems were the customer service center experienced big wait times. I mean, I think the highest wait time was 100 minutes, and there was like 47,000 people calling the customer service center in roughly the first month. So there was — and the customer service center itself had issues accessing people’s accounts. So there was sort of this, like, lag going in both directions.

Um, a lot of times the ticket vending machines went down. So if you needed to add money to your Clipper card, um, then, you know, they just spun wheels, or they might’ve taken your money without crediting your account.

Yeah, so there was really just a bunch of issues. A lot of times, though, if you already had money on your Clipper card, you could still tap and get on the system, so it wasn’t like a total system —

Alexis Madrigal: Yeah, I have to say, my — and I had a fairly seamless experience with all this. And so when I started to read about all the problems, and then, of course, this investigation, you go like, oh, man, what really happened here? Because it does feel like there’s so many different types of problems, actually, that it seemed like it was a more systemic thing.

When did you decide that you were going to kind of launch this investigation and file these public records requests and try to figure out what really happened between MTC, which of course is the accountable body here, and then — they’re a sort of software vendor who made this thing?

Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: Yeah, I mean, I started following the Clipper Executive Board meetings. That’s a body of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which is sort of this regional oversight body of Bay Area transit, ever since it launched. And in January, it was really the heads of the transit agencies that got my attention.

You had Dennis Mulligan, the general manager of the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District, saying, like, “This is a hot mess.” That’s the direct quote.

Um, and then you had, you know, riders coming in and saying, you know, they were very upset that this wasn’t working. So I think it was really the transit agency heads that kind of got my attention and wanted me to — led me to report on this.

Alexis Madrigal: Yeah, yeah. And what did you — how’d you go about reporting this out?

Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: We did two public records requests with the MTC, just basically asking — one thing that the transit agency heads and MTC talked about was there was this daily email update where Cubic, which is this company that’s responsible for rolling out Clipper, you know, was giving daily updates on what the issues were and that. So we wanted to get ahold of that.

We also were curious about how much revenue the transit agencies are — we’re losing based on this. You know, obviously, if, like, Clipper cards aren’t working, then people aren’t riding transit. And, you know, this is obviously a very, um, momentous year for Bay Area transit. We have two funding measures coming up on the November ballot where transit agencies are going to be asking voters to support them, essentially. So that was another element that played into this.

Alexis Madrigal: Yeah. And what did you actually end up getting back from MTC through these records requests?

Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: So the top line was that there was this sort of fundamental disagreement in basically around a year before Clipper 2 launched about Cubic saying basically, like, “Hey, we need to increase the testing pool of Clipper 2 in order to make sure it’s going to be ready.”

But the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which is the contract manager, was saying there’s too many issues with this system. Like, it is not ready to be expanded. Um, and you need to resolve, like, known issues first before we expand this pool.

So there was sort of this, like, contractual-speak formal letter exchange between Cubic and MTC, you know, starting in, like, February 2025 and going right up to the day before it launched. And the day before, you had the director of Clipper saying, “We don’t have confidence that financial settlement” — which is, like, you know, ensuring that —

Alexis Madrigal: The actual fare goes through.

Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: The actual fare goes through. Yeah. We don’t have confidence in this.

Alexis Madrigal: I mean, you also were able to find, which felt to me quite significant, that in April of 2025, 49% of tests passed. So that means 51% did not. I mean, these are huge issues to be having six months out of this launch after many years of this thing being in development.

Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: Yeah. And 500 open software bugs. And then by October, field testing is only 30% complete. And, you know, I think in software, right, it’s — it’s — you would expect bugs, right? Like, it’s — there’s only so much you can do before you roll out a system.

But, you know, these were pretty — like, Google Wallet being completely blocked two months before you release a system that handles, you know, tens of millions of dollars every month is, you know, that’s — that’s a pretty big issue.

Alexis Madrigal: Yeah. I mean, let’s talk a little bit about Cubic. Who are they? I mean, what I know of them is that they were the initial creator of the Clipper system, right? So they kind of had the inside track on this next-gen Clipper upgrade.

Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: Yeah, Cubic is a San Diego-based defense and transportation software company, and their division, Cubic Transportation Systems, you know, handles these fare payment systems. They’ve worked in New York City, they’ve worked in Boston, they’ve worked in Chicago, they work internationally. So they’re really big — you know, software — they’re one of the main players in sort of, if you want a fare payment system, like, you go to Cubic.

Alexis Madrigal: Yeah, yeah. Did they — were there any other people who bid on this contract?

Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: Yeah, so an interesting thing — the short answer is no. Cubic was the only bidder for the Clipper 2 contract, and they did have the Clipper 1 contract.

Now, an important thing about the Clipper contract was that it initially required whoever got the Clipper 2 contract to keep Clipper 1 going. And so you were gonna have to take on the Clipper 2 contract and then run Clipper 1 at the same time.

And the MTC decided that that was not good for competition, basically. Asking companies to come in and run somebody else’s program wasn’t going to get the bids they wanted. So they struck that from the contract. But there was still this requirement to — someone was going to have to keep C1 going, or Cubic, and then someone else could do C2. They still only got one bid.

Alexis Madrigal: It’s interesting, and we’re gonna talk maybe a little more when we bring on folks from MTC and in other places about, you know, why it is that this was difficult to get someone to do this kind of work, because it was, you know, a contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars. It’s not like this was, you know, a paltry couple million bucks.

Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: Yeah, it’s around $400 million — 393 with 20% for contingency. So close to half a billion dollars. And to Cubic’s credit, they told me that this is one of the most complex fare payment systems in the world: 22 different transit agencies across nine counties in the Bay Area. So you’re running up against all these bureaucratic and governmental red tape.

Alexis Madrigal: Yeah, yeah. You think they would have known that, though, having run the first system.

We’re talking about a KQED investigation into the rollout of Clipper 2.0 and what’s next for Clipper. We’ve got Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman, reporter with KQED News, who wrote the big story on it. And we’re gonna bring in Sue — and the executive director of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.

We wanna hear from you. Have you had issues with the rollout of Clipper 2.0? Do you like Clipper? Has it made your life as a transit rider easier? 866-733-6786, or you can email us, [email protected].

I’m Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned.