Adult-Clipper-Card-web.jpgAnother reason to sign up for the Clipper transit payment card: Muni’s decrepitude could be your gain!

Muni Diaries has official confirmation that if a bus/streetcar/LRV’s Clipper card reader is broken or down, as with the cash fare boxes soon to be of yore, drivers are instructed to allow you to ride without demanding another form of payment — they just won’t give you a transfer.

This, after a reader wrote to them saying that the driver of a 28 told her “I have to pay cash fare when the reader is down and that’s policy.” MD then posts the official memo circulated to drivers that proves the 28 driver in question was wrong.

A disconnect between official policy and Muni drivers is hardly new, so our advice: print out that memo and stash it next to your card.

That way, if a driver, as MD puts it, “didn’t get the memo,” you can deliver said memo personally.

the author

Eve Batey is the editor and publisher of the San Francisco Appeal. She used to be the San Francisco Chronicle's Deputy Managing Editor for Online, and started at the Chronicle as their blogging and interactive editor. Before that, she was a co-founding writer and the lead editor of SFist. She's been in the city since 1997, presently living in the Outer Sunset with her husband, cat, and dog. You can reach Eve at eve@sfappeal.com.

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