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SF Standard: Muni finally gets tap-to-pay. What took so damn long?
December 11, 2025— As the Bay Area celebrated the long-awaited launch of tap-to-pay on Muni and BART, San Francisco Standard reporter George Kelly turned to Laurel Paget-Seekins, senior policy advocate for transportation equity at Public Advocates, to examine who might be left behind by the new system.
Paget-Seekins was interviewed as part of The Standard’s investigation into the Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s Next Generation Clipper system—a 20-year, repeatedly delayed project that finally allows riders to pay with credit cards, debit cards, or mobile devices across more than two dozen Bay Area transit agencies.
While advocates like Paget-Seekins are excited about the new system which will makes public transit more accessible, they have also raised concerns to AC Transit about how the upgrade impacts low-income riders who rely on cash payments. The new system eliminates weekly passes for cash-paying customers, and infrastructure gaps mean some of the region’s most-ridden routes lack access to Clipper machines entirely.
“It already wasn’t equitable [with cash paying customers paying $.50 more per ride], but this is making it even more inequitable,” Paget-Seekins told The Standard, pointing specifically to AC Transit’s Tempo bus rapid transit line through East Oakland, where no stations have Clipper machines despite it being the agency’s most-ridden route.
Her comments underscore a persistent tension in transit modernization: technological upgrades that benefit credit card and smartphone users may simultaneously create new barriers for the region’s most vulnerable transit riders who depend on cash and need affordable payment options. However, simple solutions like creating more places to add to clipper card in bus heavy locales and adjusting fares for cash riders could help dramatically.