The Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) announced it is expanding its pay-by-app carpool program to all west bay BART stations that offer parking, including Daly City, Colma, South San Francisco, San Bruno and Millbrae.
The program debuted in June at Dublin/Pleasanton, Orinda, Antioch and Warm Springs. The new program allows riders who carpool to a station to pay for parking using the official BART app and park in the permit section of the lot where spots don’t fill up as early as the daily fee section.
The app payment feature is a significant step towards modernizing BART’s parking payment and enforcement systems. The app accepts credit cards, debit cards, Venmo or PayPal and doesn’t require waiting in line to pay for a stall. The new program cracks down on carpool cheats by verifying the carpool is valid by requiring both riders in the carpool to enter the fare gates after making the app payment.
“Our initial test stations have proven to be a success with data showing about 225 carpool payments each day with the carpool verification system working as designed,” said Board President Bevan Dufty. “Not only are we encouraging carpooling to BART which increases ridership and takes cars off the road, but we are using the program to test app-based payments.”
Having an app-based payment process improves the rider experience. At stations without the option, riders must currently wait in line to pay with cash or set up an EZ rider account, load it with funds, connect it to their Clipper card and get a hang tag for their car. BART plans to expand the app parking payment in phases to all riders in 2020 but is offering it to carpools first to promote carpooling to stations. The Carpool to BART program will continue to roll out in 2020.
