Journey to the End of the East Bay (Only $2)

Streetsblog informs us that there’s a loophole in these new Clipper cards that lets enterprising transit riders game the bejesus out of BART.

Two-dollar trips to the furthest reaches of the Bay Area suburbs? Cool. Let’s check ‘em out. I hear Zachary’s Pizza is almost as good as Little Star.

But seriously, what’s your favorite thing to do in the ‘burbs? Everybody share, and whomever comes up with the best or most intriguing suggestion gets a pair of $2 Clipper cards free!!

[Self portrait by Mat Honan]

Previously:

How To Have Fun This Summer If You Live In SF And Your Best Friends Live in Oakland

24 Responses to “Journey to the End of the East Bay (Only $2)”

  1. Sweet T says:

    Going for the obvious: my favorite thing to do in the suburbs is leave the suburbs.

  2. No. Zachary’s pizza is not good. Tomato casserole is not pizza. Thin crust is pizza. And Zachary’s thin crust is a hot circle of garbage. Little Star makes good pizza.

  3. TheTens says:

    ““It’s a built-in convenience to the system, based on the goodwill that people will re-load their card,” said Goodwin.”

    Bahahahahahaha!

  4. Nico says:

    I ride BART to Oakland everyday. for $3.30 each way. I need to get me one of these STAT.

  5. Tim says:

    C’mon. Let’s not do (or promote) this. Where do you think the money for BART comes from? It’s not some for profit business deserving of scamming.

    • Andrew Sarkarati says:

      but if this wasn’t publicized, would they ever think to getting around to fixing this exploit?

    • Herr Doktor Professor Deth Vegetable says:

      Tim: Yes, because that practice of “Security through Obscurity” always works out SO well.

      Please. This is a bug that needs to be fixed, and only by it being publicized will they have any reason to do so.

    • Tim says:

      Fair enough on both Mr. Sarkarati and the good Doktor’s points. My inartful phrasing was meant to say we shouldn’t promote scamming BART, not that we shouldn’t promote the issue so it can be rectified.

  6. Damn – wish i had known that all week….better get on it quick before they figure that shit out…

    One of the fucked things is, with transfers you get 2-3 hours to cruise the cit-ay-tay , but with clipper you have to pay for each ride. annoying. or is there something i don’t know about??

    • asshole says:

      you tag it once and it works just like a transfer, but it counts time digitally. so if you have to transfer busses, you tag it again and it determines whether or not you have time left. if you don’t then it charges you, if you do, it lets you on. it is just a more controlled way of making people pay rather than drivers giving out, for example, late night passes at 4 in the afternoon.

      hopefully that is what you were referring to.

  7. Amy says:

    $2 ride to the airport? I’m game.

  8. Allan Hough says:

    Uh-oh, somebody in my Facebook feed said:

    “This really wasn’t a secret… but they made a change recently to [t]he card that it would only cover the fare for registered cards.”

    Does that mess up our scam?

  9. whit says:

    I accidentally discovered thIs last week in the 24th st Bart when I was like “oh shit my clipper is a dollar short and there’s no reload station.” the attendent laughed and was like “no worries it’ll just be a negative amount.” cha-ching!!!

  10. Erik says:

    This just means that pretty soon the minimum amount that you can have on a clipper card to go through a BART faregate will be $10.90 which is the most you can spend on a one-way BART trip. Or they will have to buy twice as many Clipper reload machines so they can put one next to each add-fare machine they currently have inside of the gates.

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