Clipper 2.0 Is Still Seeing Hourslong Outages, and a Full Fix Is Months Away

While problems continue to plague the rollout of an upgraded Clipper fare payment system, incurring significant costs and frustrating transit riders with outages and glitches, a full resolution of the issues is still months away, officials said this week.

Representatives from Cubic Transportation Systems, which holds the $461 million contract to develop and run next-generation Clipper, delivered a detailed report about the system’s multitude of problems to the Bay Area transit agency officials who make up the Clipper Executive Board at a meeting on Monday.

The system, also known as Clipper 2.0, promised new features such as discounted transfers and instant availability of added funds, and upgrading all of the approximately 15 million Clipper cards was originally scheduled to take eight to 12 weeks. But with critical issues still affecting nearly every aspect of the system since it launched Dec. 10, just 1.3 million accounts have been upgraded so far, according to Angus Davol, assistant director for Clipper development and budget at the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.

With an uncertain timeline for completion now stretching into the next fiscal year, Clipper managers say the project is causing significant increases in operating costs, as transit agencies and riders grow increasingly frustrated with Cubic’s delivery of the product.

Monday’s meeting revealed Cubic has recorded 10 major incidents accounting for over 33 hours of service outages since Clipper 2.0 launched. As recently as last Wednesday, the system experienced an outage of three hours and 48 minutes, during which all ticket vending machines showed a “Verify failure and limit” message, and Clipper users were unable to make a purchase with their card.

That particular outage coincided with the Giants’ first game of the season.

“ I was out on the Caltrain platform on Giants’ opening day and saw riders queued up and struggling with the ticket vending machine,” said Adina Levin, the executive director of the transportation advocacy nonprofit group Seamless Bay Area.

A separate outage earlier this month lasted over 12 hours. Transit agencies’ fare inspection devices went offline, and Clipper users couldn’t access their accounts.

Board members voiced their frustration with the company at Monday’s meeting.

“ When is the outage going to be in April? Certainly, there’s going to be a minimum of one,” said board member Robert Powers, BART’s general manager.

Clipper 2.0 has seen issues with mobile wallets, account migration, ticket vending machines, fare inspection devices used by transit agencies and customer service platforms.

“ While the next generation Clipper system is live and progress continues, some riders, frontline staff and transit operators have had experiences they should not expect,” Cynthia Eng, senior vice president and general manager at Cubic, said at Monday’s meeting.

The depth of the issues plaguing the Clipper system has forced Cubic to refrain from upgrading accounts in batches, instead moving more slowly on a case-by-case basis.

This has left next-generation Clipper in a monthslong “soft launch” phase, in which the Metropolitan Transportation Commission is refraining from advertising the upgrade’s benefits until critical issues are resolved and the bulk migration of accounts is completed. Cubic now estimates that it will have addressed enough of the critical issues that it could test a bulk migration of accounts by May 30.

“ Frankly, as a board member, I feel helpless. I see problems getting resolved and new problems coming up,” said board member Christy Wegener, the executive director of the Livermore Amador Valley Transit Authority. “ I just can’t help but wonder what damage has been done to our ridership.”

A February MTC memo shared with KQED said that the contract between Cubic and MTC “provides certain methods of redress for underperformance by Cubic. Staff are currently engaged in evaluation of our options.”

With the ongoing issues, MTC is preparing for the possibility that the previous version of Clipper will have to remain in service into next year. Staff are proposing to allocate an additional $3.4 million in next fiscal year’s budget to continue funding the original version of Clipper into next March, meaning a complete transition to Clipper 2.0 could still be a year away.

The budget proposal also includes an additional $7.6 million to cover increased customer service center staffing. The call center currently receives 35,000 calls a month, nearly three times what it was originally contracted to handle.

One BART station agent who spoke to KQED on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak with the press said they felt frustrated and stuck by the ongoing issues.

“ I want to support growing ridership, and I feel like I don’t have the tools to do my job,” the station agent told KQED. “I like it when I can help people. It’s unfortunate and embarrassing to have dedication to our work and not have the tools to do it, to be embarrassed of your product and not have a way to improve it.”

When asked about the financial impact of courtesy rides that station agents may give riders who have problems with Clipper, MTC spokesperson John Goodwin said the commission does not have an estimate of revenue loss for the overall system or for specific agencies “because we don’t have a count of how many transit riders have been waved through fare gates or onto a bus.”

“There’s no question that some fare revenue went uncollected during Clipper system outages, but neither we nor the participating agencies can precisely determine how much,” Goodwin told KQED in an email.

BART spokesperson Alicia Trost told KQED earlier this month that the agency had not submitted any reimbursement requests to MTC.

The MTC estimated that an hourslong systemwide Clipper outage on July 1, 2025, led to $386,005 in lost revenue for BART, which MTC reimbursed.

Other major Bay Area transit agencies are expressing frustration.

“If Caltrain can’t accurately and reliably check fares every time, with every accepted bank card and credit card, and do it very quickly, that has a significant impact on customer experience and on our ability to collect fares that help fund transit,” Caltrain Director of Government and Community Affairs Jason Baker told KQED in an email.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency told KQED that it did not appear issues with Clipper 2.0 were hurting its budget, adding that the majority of challenges so far have had to do with Cubic’s own software.

“We understood how tremendous an undertaking this would be, and the rollout did not meet our standards or expectations,” SFMTA Director of Communications Parisa Safarzadeh told KQED.