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Bay Area, service updates

Transit guide to Super Bowl LX events

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On Sunday, February 8, the Seattle Seahawks will face the New England Patriots at Super Bowl LX at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara. During the week leading up to the event, there will be various public events throughout the Bay Area. The Bay Area, known for transportation innovations like rideshares such as Uber and Lyft and now autonomous cars, also offers plentiful public transportation options that easily bypass traffic on many congested corridors. Compared to the last time the Bay Area hosted the Super Bowl ten years ago, these options have improved with more lines, more stations, and faster service. With the updated version of Clipper, visitors to the Bay Area can easily board and pay fares on public transit by simply tapping their contactless debit or credit cards, or smart devices with Google or Apple Pay.

For non-Bay Area locals, most events before the Super Bowl will take place at various locations in San Francisco and San Jose. Each city has its own local transit system (Muni in San Francisco, VTA in San Jose). BART and Caltrain are regional rail systems connecting the two cities. Despite having different transit providers, all use the Clipper regional fare payment system and accept contactless debit or credit cards, as well as smart devices. Additionally, Bay Wheels, a bike share system operated by Lyft, has stations throughout San Francisco and in downtown San Jose.

BART – Bay Area Rapid Transit
Caltrain

February 2: Opening Night in San Jose

Location: San Jose Convention Center

VTA Light Rail has a stop in front of the center. The nearest Caltrain station is San Jose Diridon, where riders can transfer to light rail or use bike share. The nearest BART station is Berryessa/North San Jose. Bus connections are available to Santa Clara Street, about a 10-minute walk to the convention center.

February 3-7 Super Bowl LX Experience

Location: Moscone Center

Moscone Center is located south of Market Street in downtown San Francisco, just blocks from Union Square. It is within walking distance of BART and Muni. From Caltrain, the location is about a 15-minute walk from 4th & King Station or a short ride on Muni’s T Line.

Streets surrounding the Moscone Center will have lane closures or complete street closures, affecting access for rideshare and autonomous cars. Surface Muni buses will continue to operate through the closed sections. The Muni Metro T Line offers traffic-free access between Chinatown, Market Street, and Mission Bay, with a subway stop near Moscone Center.

February 4-7: NFL Culture Club at The Pearl 

Location: 601 19th Street, San Francisco

The location is less than a block from the Muni T Line stop (20th Street), which connects with BART at Market Street. It’s also just a few blocks from Caltrain at the 22nd Street Station. Some surrounding streets will have no parking zones. The block on 19th Street between Tennessee and 3rd Street will be closed to vehicle traffic. Passenger loading zones will be located on 20th Street west of 3rd Street.

The Muni Metro T-Third Line connects Downtown SF and BART with event venues in the Mission Bay and Dogpatch areas, including Chase Center.

February 7: Taste of the NFL

Location: The Hibernia, 1 Jones Street, San Francisco

The venue is a short walk from the Civic Center/United Nations Plaza BART Station. The blocks on Jones and McAllister streets in front of the venue will be closed to vehicle traffic. Some Muni bus routes will be rerouted around the closure.

February 5, 6, 7: NFL Honors, Studio 60 Concerts

Location: Palace of Fine Arts

This venue is served by Muni bus route 30, which connects with BART at Market Street and Caltrain at 4th & King Station.

February 5, 6, 7: BAHC Live! Concert Series

Location: Bill Graham Civic Auditorium

The venue is a short walk from the Civic Center/United Nations Plaza BART Station. The block on Grove Street in front of the venue will be closed to vehicle traffic.

February 5, 6, 7: NPU Live’s People’s Pregame

Location: Pier 80 – The Midway

The location is less than a block from the Muni T Line stop (Marin Street), which connects with BART at Market Street. It’s also about a 15 minute walk from Caltrain at the 22nd Street Station.

February 6: Shaq’s Fun House Super Bowl,
February 7: Sports Illustrated The Party,
February 8: Guy Fieri’s Flavortown Tailgate

Location: Cow Palace

This venue is served by Muni bus route 8, which connects with BART at Market Street and Balboa Park Station, the closest station to Cow Palace. Caltrain riders can exit at Bayshore Station, walk to Bayshore Blvd (Muni’s Arleta Station), and take the southbound Muni bus 8 or 9 to Cow Palace.

February 6: Madden Bowl,
February 7: Dave Chappelle

Location: Chase Center

A short walk from Muni’s T Line (UCSF/Chase Center), which connects with BART at Market Street. Caltrain riders can take the T Line or walk to Chase Center for about 15 minutes from 4th & King Station.

February 6-8: Downtown San Jose Celebrations

Events will take place at various venues in Downtown San Jose. The VTA 500 bus connects with Caltrain at San Jose Diridon and BART at Berryessa/North San Jose Station, with stops along Santa Clara Street in Downtown San Jose.

February 8: Super Bowl LX

Location: Levi’s Stadium

The venue is located in north Santa Clara, primarily served by VTA Light Rail. The line transports riders from Caltrain in Mountain View and BART in Milpitas to the stadium. For the Super Bowl, VTA will operate a special service pattern to increase capacity for the event and address heightened security needs.

Caltrain runs every 30 minutes from San Francisco and BART runs every 20 minutes from San Francisco and 10 minutes south of Downtown Oakland.

VTA
VTA Light Rail serving Levi’s Stadium and the Silicon Valley

Pre-event Light Rail service:

  • Orange Line (west): Mountain View (Caltrain) to Great America
  • Orange Line (east): Alum Rock to Milpitas (BART) to Lick Mill
  • Green Line (north): San Jose Diridon to Downtown San Jose to Lick Mill

Light Rail service will run from Winchester to San Jose Diridon and from Santa Teresa to Downtown San Jose. Riders must transfer to the Green Line (north) to reach Levi’s Stadium or stations further north.

Source: VTA

There is no rail service between Great America and Lick Mill stations. Riders traveling along the Orange Line through the stadium area must transfer to a bus bridge between Reamwood and Baypointe.

Source: VTA

Post-event service will largely mirror the pre-event service. Riders heading to Downtown San Jose or BART should board trains at Lick Mill station on the east side of Levi’s Stadium (exit Gate F). Riders heading to Mountain View and Caltrain should board trains at Great America station (exit Gate A). Extra post-event service will run up to 2 hours after the end of the game, not including the trophy ceremony. Light Rail service will run every 30 minutes after that.

VTA local bus service is available from Cupertino, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, and Valley Fair/Santana Row to Levi’s Stadium. Additional trips will be offered on two of three routes for Super Bowl.

There will be road closures in the stadium area, including Tasman Drive between Patrick Henry Drive and Lick Mill Blvd.

Please allow yourself plenty of time to travel, as all transit routes to Levi’s are expected to be crowded.

Amtrak and ACE (Clipper is not accepted)

Amtrak’s Capitol Corridor train stops just east of Levi’s Stadium. For the Super Bowl, Amtrak will operate on a special schedule, and all trains that day will require tickets to be purchased before the trip. There will be no onboard sales and tickets valid for other dates will not be accepted.

Altamont Corridor Express will operate a single round trip train for the Super Bowl.

February 8: public watch parties

Location: Oakland Henry J. Kaiser Center

A short walk from BART’s Lake Merritt Station.

Location: Thrive City at Chase Center

A short walk from Muni’s T Line.

Paying the fare

If your travel party consists of all adult riders, the most convenient way to pay fares is for each rider to use their contactless debit or credit card, or mobile device, and tap on the Clipper (regional fare payment system) reader at the station or onboard vehicles. This method saves you the hassle of buying a paper ticket, and transfer discounts are applied automatically.

Riders who prefer to pay with cash can purchase a paper ticket for Muni Metro, Caltrain, or VTA Light Rail, or buy a plastic Clipper card loaded with fares for all of these providers, including BART. There is no paper ticket option available for BART, but all buses accept cash fares in addition to Clipper cards.

If your party includes seniors or children who qualify for discounted fares, they can buy paper tickets for Muni Metro, Caltrain, or VTA Light Rail to receive the reduced fare. Using contactless payment or a regular plastic Clipper card will charge the adult fare. For BART, seniors and youth can only receive discounted fares with a special Clipper card, which must be obtained in advance.

To ride BART, tap your Clipper card, contactless debit or credit card, or smart device with Apple or Google Pay on the reader (blue circle) at the faregate. Use the same card or device when entering and exiting the station. If paying with cash, use the ticket machines to buy a plastic Clipper card for each rider. Fares are deducted for each trip and vary based on distance traveled.

BART faregates

To ride Caltrain with a Clipper or contactless card/device, tap the card or device on the reader at the station before boarding and after exiting. If you forget to tap after exiting, you will be overcharged. When using a paper ticket, buy it at a ticket machine and keep it with you during the ride.

Caltrain Clipper reader

To ride VTA Light Rail with a Clipper or contactless card/device, tap the card or device on the reader at the station before boarding. There’s no need to tag after exiting. If using a paper ticket, purchase it at a ticket machine and keep it with you for the ride.

Clipper reader onboard vehicle

To ride Muni Metro (including the T Line) with a Clipper or contactless card/device, tap the card or device on the reader at the faregate in subway stations or inside the vehicle (near doors) when boarding at surface stops. There’s no need to tag after exiting. For cash or senior/youth riders, buy a paper ticket at subway stations or pay the cash fare at the front of the train when boarding at surface stops.

Parking

One of the main reasons to take transit to Super Bowl LX is to avoid parking concerns, as parking is limited at Levi’s Stadium and at many venues hosting pre-Super Bowl events. Parking at BART and Caltrain stations is generally plentiful.

A parking fee is required on weekdays before 3 pm at BART stations with parking (except Milpitas and Berryessa/North San Jose, where the fee is required seven days a week). The fee varies by station based on demand. Remember your parking spot number and pay at the station using an “add fare” machine behind the faregates with cash or a credit card (Clipper cards are not accepted). You can also pay with the official BART app. Parking is free after 3 pm and all day on weekends.

Parking at Milpitas and Berryessa/North San Jose BART stations requires a fee seven days a week. You can pay online or at a pay station on the ground floor of the parking garage or at the entrance to the surface lot.

At Caltrain stations between San Francisco and San Jose Diridon, a parking fee is required seven days a week. Remember your parking spot number and pay at a ticket machine at the station or with the ParkMobile app. Parking is free at stations south of San Jose Diridon, including Tamien.

Parking is free at VTA Light Rail stations, except at Milpitas BART and Mountain View Caltrain. Light Rail stations generally have smaller parking lots until South San Jose along the Blue Line.

Bay Area

Clipper 2.0 rolls out, offering new features

On December 10, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the regional agency that manages the Clipper fare payment system in the Bay Area, rolled out the second generation of the system, which it has been preparing to implement for the past few years. As part of this rollout, card reading equipment has been replaced or updated at stations and on transit vehicles across all transit agencies. The second generation is designed to support “open payment” and offer fare discounts for trips involving multiple agencies, which can provide significant fare reductions.

The open payment features allow riders to pay fares directly with a contactless debit or credit card, or with Apple Pay or Google Pay, without needing a physical or virtual Clipper Card. BART implemented this feature in late August. With this rollout, the feature will expand to all agencies that accept Clipper. For BART, after a month of implementation, about 8% of riders use contactless debit or credit cards daily, with higher rates on weekends and event days. Contactless bank card usage at SFO is even higher, reaching nearly 30%. This feature has benefited occasional and out-of-town riders by eliminating the time and hassle of acquiring a physical or virtual card. With the full rollout, riders can board the bus without exact change or a Clipper card and pay with a contactless debit or credit card instead.

Source: BART

Another key feature is the interagency transfer discounts. With Clipper 2.0, riders pay full fare on the first trip and receive a transfer discount of up to $2.85 on the next agency when transferring within two hours. This provides significant savings for certain commutes involving two agencies, such as trips across the Bay on BART or AC Transit to Downtown San Francisco, then transferring to Muni for jobs outside downtown, or trips from the South Bay on Caltrain to Downtown San Francisco with a transfer to Muni at 4th & King Station. It also benefits riders living near local transit system boundaries, such as Daly City and Palo Alto. Regional transit systems like Caltrain and BART have experienced significant and sustained ridership declines since the start of the COVID pandemic. Making interagency trips less costly can help improve ridership recovery for these systems and divert more trips paralleling BART and Caltrain that are currently made by single-occupancy automobiles. The interagency transfer discount is also available to riders paying with contactless debit or credit cards.

What makes Clipper 2.0 different is that it is an account-based system, whereas the original Clipper system is card-based. In the original system, primary data is stored on the cards and the readers on transit vehicles, with data exchanged with the central server only intermittently. This approach was necessary in the 1990s and early 2000s due to limited technology and data bandwidth. The downside was that fare options were limited, and funds or tickets added through the Clipper website might not be usable for days. Account-based systems move most calculations and data to central servers, similar to many apps we use daily on our smartphones. They also allow open payment options that card-based systems couldn’t provide.

Despite the benefits of open payment, riders eligible for fare discounts—youth, seniors, disabled, and low-income individuals—should apply for and use a special Clipper card, or use paper tickets or pay cash fares for systems other than BART. Full fares are charged when contactless debit or credit cards are used. Multiple paper tickets purchased with a single card transaction may be preferred for family trips on certain systems because, with Clipper, each rider needs their own card, whether it’s a Clipper card or a contactless debit or credit card. Also, Clipper users will no longer see their fare balance on the onboard readers and at BART faregates; they should check their balance on the Clipper app instead.

With the full rollout, existing Clipper users can use their cards as usual. MTC plans to migrate these cards to the new servers over several weeks, as millions of cards are currently in circulation. To access new features sooner, current users can log in to the Clipper website or the updated app, which will trigger the migration process.

For Caltrain monthly pass holders, the transition to Clipper 2.0 will require tagging on and off at stations for every trip. Previously, monthly pass users only needed to tag on and off for the first trip of the month to activate the pass; no further tagging was needed as long as the trip was within the zones the pass covered or on weekends. Under the old Clipper system, monthly pass holders had to purchase an upgrade on paper or through the now-retired Caltrain app if they traveled beyond the covered zones. If they tagged on and off with Clipper for any trip outside those zones, they were charged the full fare. With Clipper 2.0, fare upgrades will be applied instead. Although there are many improvements, the necessity to tag on and off remains a significant inconvenience, along with the worry of being cited for forgetting to tag on or being overcharged for forgetting to tag off.

The original Clipper system (first known as Translink) is more than 20 years old, which is quite outdated for a technology product. Clipper 2.0 is an important update, not only to keep the system maintainable for the future but also to add new features that customers now expect, especially given the rapid changes in the private sector. When the original Clipper was introduced, people hailed or called to request taxicabs and paid cash for fares. Today, TNCs such as Uber and Lyft are major competitors to transit, with all ride requests and payments handled on smartphones. In the near future, autonomous vehicles will further increase competition and contribute to road congestion.

The new system will enable agencies to improve pricing strategies to encourage usage and promote fare equity. Instead of pre-paid passes, agencies can implement daily, weekly, or monthly fare caps, giving low-income riders more flexibility to pay. For Caltrain, this means transitioning from rigid fare zones to station-to-station fares. Currently, the fare for traveling between San Bruno and Millbrae is the same as traveling between San Francisco and Redwood City. Transit agencies can implement special fares within the Clipper system, rather than outside the system with riders buying paper tickets, paying fares in cash, or use dedicated agency apps.

Bay Area, service updates

Judge orders end to VTA strike

After a court hearing yesterday afternoon, a judge granted an injunction stopping the strike by ATU Local 265. VTA bus service is planned to resume on Friday. Light Rail service will return at a later date after a system inspection.

There’s still no agreement in sight between VTA and ATU Local 265, but the union can no longer use a strike as leverage for now. However, transit unions elsewhere have resolved disputes without striking. Strikes put riders in a difficult position since they’re not a negotiating party.

Bay Area, service updates

VTA transit strike continues, offers Uber vouchers

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Due to the prolonged strike by ATU Local 265, representing VTA frontline workers, VTA is offering $5 vouchers for Uber rides starting and ending at VTA transit stops. Riders pay $2.50 first before the $5 voucher is applied, and again for the remaining cost beyond the voucher. This discount can be used twice per day, between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m., until the strike ends.

VTA and ATU Local 265 are still far from an agreement. The agency made a new offer of an 11% wage increase over three years, but the union, demanding an 18% increase, rejected it. VTA is asking the court to intervene, citing a no-strike clause from the last contract that should apply during negotiations.

A strike is challenging for both transit workers and passengers. It forces many transit riders to rely on Uber and Lyft, which incur higher costs for riders and offer less pay and fewer protections for drivers working as independent contractors.

Bay Area, service updates

VTA workers to go on strike

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According to ATU Local 265, which represents many VTA frontline positions, the union will go on strike starting Monday, March 10. All VTA services will be unavailable except for Access Paratransit. The agency and the union are at an impasse over wage increases and other issues.

VTA advises transit riders to seek alternatives.

Options:

Microtransit:

Other transit and shuttle providers:

Other agencies that use VTA owned transit centers may have to be relocated because of the strike.

Other mobility:

  • Bay Wheels bike share – Downtown San Jose
  • Scooter share – Downtown San Jose
  • Employee shuttles for select employers

The strike will impact riders, most of whom have few, if any, options and no role in the labor negotiations. Even if the strike eventually resolves, if it forces a rider to purchase a car, that rider is unlikely to return once the strike is over. The strike may increase traffic, particularly around schools, since they are still in session. More parents are likely to pick up and drop off their children by car if VTA is no longer an option.