Caltrain riders are the least satisfied with the Clipper card, according to a new customer satisfaction study for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.  A December 2012 phone survey of 800 registered users showed that Clipper customers overall are more satisfied than the previous year, with 88% reporting that they are satisfied with the service, and 62% reporting that they are very satisfied.  However, Caltrain riders were the least positive of the 4 major agencies, with 71% satisfied, among whom 47% were very satisfied.  Among Caltrain riders, 19% were neutral, and 11% were dissatisfied, according to a slice of the survey by agency requested by Green Caltrain.
         Clipper Customer Satisfaction Survey Results
Survey conducted for MTC, December, 2012
What do you think, Caltrain riders? What’s working for you with Clipper, and what’s not working?
One area for improvement that emerges from the survey data is transfers.  Among all Clipper customers, 56% use more than one transit agency at least occasionally, indicating that there is a large customer base for transfers.  An MTC staffer looked at the data and told Green Caltrain that approximately 23% of respondents transfer between agencies during a typical trip, and the remainder transfer more occasionally.
One of the potential benefits of using a common smart card is integrated transfers, but when Clipper was set up originally, the participating agencies were unable to agree on a shared system.
Bay Area transfer options have declined in the last year with the demise of the BART plus program, a non-Clipper service that provided free bus transfers to BART. That service was largely used by customers for repeated free bus rides, so it didn’t serve the intended purpose.
Muni leader Ed Reiskin has also recently called for better transfer integration.  Now that Clipper is well established as a payment tool, is it time to revisit the promise of better integration across services?
What’s not working:
* Zone upgrades should be done seamlessly, not with a paper ticket.
* The lack of fix-it tickets for paid-monthly users who simply haven’t tagged on.
* Multi day load times from buying online to being to load it at a Clipper tag station.
* The long lines for multi-minute loads at 4th & King on the first of the month.
The locations of the Clipper readers at the Milbrae station make me think that Caltrain wants to actively punish people transferring.
Just making tagging in to BART tag your card off of Caltrain would save me money (accidentally donated $8 to Caltrain on Sunday), and time (including missed trains).
Areas for improvement:
1.Clipper Add-value machine are waaay too slow, causing long wait times for service at peak times. A faster internet connection is one possible cure.
2.Ill-conceived plan to eliminate 8-rides by worsening terms should be reversed. I’ve donated several rides to Caltrain as a result. How about 10-rides with longer validity?
3. Electronic zone upgrades so I don’t have to juggle multiple zone 8-rides. Or is this a subtle attempt to push 8-ride use further into decline?
1) The Clipper machines are ancient (at least ones in SF). You can buy a pass via the clipper machines under Market for SF Muni in under 30 secs. They were both installed around the same time? Whomever approved such garbage for Caltrain should be fired.
2) If I use clipper with muni before end of the month, why doesn’t monthly pass load then when i get on a bus? Why do I still need to tag on and tag off on the first day at the Caltrain station?
3) Why do I even have to tag on at all? Conductor’s checker should load it if needed. (if muni or bart didn’t load it)
4) How do I use zone upgrade with an 8-ride? It was easy in the past. Now, it’s no longer possible.
5) If I tag on at 9am in SF, but forget to tag off in Mountain View, why do I get charged for a ride to GIlroy if there’s no AM service to Gilroy until 4pm? It should be charged to SJ at most.
6) When there’s a suicide, and Caltrain announces that “BART honoring Caltrain tickets”, they really mean that I have to call Clipper next day to correct errors. With BART is worse since only one gate will “honor” it. If I then tag out, and I use BART weeks later, I can’t enter/exit and need to explain that there was a suicide on Caltrain 3 weeks ago. The whole “honoring” concept needs to be fixed. Especially when going to BART.
7) If you forget to tag off in Mountain View, the next time you tag on in Mountain View, it should tag off the last trip in Mountain View instead of Gilroy. There’s a possibility for cheating the system here, but that’s tedius and wouldn’t be common.
8) If I go only 3 stops or less, I should be charged a single zone fare even if I cross a zone boundary. (Perhaps on Clipper only) Let’s take advantage of clipper to encourage more short Caltrain trips
1. There are very few Caltrain stations with add-value machines. Clipper has been around for *years* now, and the fact that you still have to find a Walgreen’s to add value is ridiculous.
2. Clipper is a computerized, electronic system. The Caltrain pass structure made sense for paper tickets, but is now just an annoyance. We should be able to take advantage of the flexibility of this new system:
Eliminate 8-rides and just give passengers a deeper discount for using clipper cash. Clipper card holders are frequent transit users. How many of these passengers ride the train fewer than 8 times (four days) a month? These lost revenues may be made up for by increased ridership from frequent riders who require flexibility in origin and destination.
Eliminate zones, and just charge people for distance traveled.
Automatically apply zone (or distance) upgrades when the user tags on and off.
Fix tagging issues for autoloaded monthly passes. Allow autoload/website users to load passes by double-tagging at the same machine. And let monthly passes be loaded starting the 21st, so people don’t have to remember to tag only on their first ride of the month.
Figure out a way to fix the “gotcha” when people forget to tag off. Martin’s suggestion is a good one, when they tag on *and off* for their return trip, refund their money. Nobody is going to game the system by taking the train to their destination, then traveling to 2 other stations just to tag.
Let me just say that Walgreens is not an options for people who use the pre-tax transit benefit card (like WageWorks). Those cards don’t work at Walgreens. Since majority of commuters use that to save money on passes, they’re stuck ordering online, waiting 3 days, then tagging on/off (but only on caltrain, not bart/muni) or at those slow machines in SF. If your commute doesn’t include SF or SJ, you’re out of luck.
Hi, all. I shared these comments with Caltrain’s marketing department which manages the Clipper program for Caltrain, and received the following response from Rita Haskin, Caltrain Marketing:
Adina – The issues identified are similar to what we have been working to manage or improve. There aren’t many solutions that can be implemented in the short term. However, we are currently engaged with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission staff on long-range planning for the next generation of Clipper.
We also are planning our ticket machine replacement project, which is a few years away. One of the desired items to include is the ability to load a product or cash to a Clipper card.
I presented information to the CAC when we were transitioning to Clipper. I would be happy to provide them with an update and leave that to the chair and staff liaison, Michelle Bouchard, to determine.
Rita
With my CAC hat on, I have requested an agenda item for the Citizens’ Advisory Committee to review the status and get more feedback on the Clipper program, including which improvements can be made sooner, which might be done in the context of ticket vending machine replacement, and what will require next-generation Clipper.