Second phase of BayPass pilot looks like a winner

Preliminary results from the first year of the Clipper BayPass Phase 2 pilot indicate participating riders at the first three partner organizations in aggregate took 35% more transit trips in the last six months of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023. 

The ridership gains generated approximately $1.1 million in additional fare revenue for Bay Area transit agencies in Fiscal Year 2025.

MTC and Bay Area transit agencies launched the Clipper BayPass pilot program in 2022 to study the impact of a single pass that could provide Bay Area residents unlimited access to all bus, rail and ferry services in the nine-county region. The BayPass pilot was designed to evaluate what effect the pass might have on

• Increasing transit ridership
• Generating new transit revenues
• Improving customer experience and attitudes toward transit

Launched in early 2024, Phase 2 of the Clipper BayPass pilot involves selling the all-access transit pass to organizations who would like to offer it to their employees, students and/or residents. Original Phase 2 participants include 10,300 people affiliated with UCSF, the Alameda Transportation Management Association (TMA) and the City of Menlo Park. By September 2025, there were a total of 15 paying BayPass partner organizations with some 84,000 individuals eligible for BayPass.

In surveys conducted with BayPass users at UCSF, the Alameda TMA and the City of Menlo Park, the share of respondents indicating public transit is a “very appealing” option for traveling in the Bay Area increased fivefold since they received BayPass, with a majority of respondents indicating they use transit more often for trips to work, school, healthcare and recreation.

These initial Phase 2 results echo findings from Phase 1, in which the BayPass was distributed to 51,300 people at San Francisco State University, San José State University, Santa Rosa Junior College and the University of California, Berkeley as well as 12 affordable housing properties in the Bay Area. 

The Clipper® BayPass Phase 1 Pilot Program Evaluation Report was released in June 2025 and indicated that college students with access to Clipper BayPass took 30% more transit trips and made more than twice as many transfers between transit agencies than their peers who only had access to their schools’ preexisting institutional transit passes for the period from August 2022 through June 2024.

Both phases of the Clipper BayPass pilot suggest that BayPass improves student and employee retention rates. The Phase 1 program evaluation found that students randomly assigned BayPass were 6% to 15% less likely to leave their university between Fall 2022 and Fall 2023 than their peers. Meanwhile, the share of Phase 2 survey respondents indicating they were more likely to stay at their current job increased by 44% since they received BayPass.