The new difficulty of buying a Caltrain ticket

I take the train home twice a week, at minimum. Thursdays, after poring through police call logs at the Daily Journal office, I head to the Hayward Park station. If some city is seeing an uptick in crime, or if I dally too much at Trader Joe’s post-shift, I’ll just barely catch my train. These days, I would buy my ticket on the mobile app while I scrambled to my stop. 

Saturdays, after mock trial practice, my sister drops me off at the San Mateo station. When our meetings inevitably run five, 10 minutes over, my sister and I are left with only 15 to make it there — hoping there won’t be too much traffic downtown during peak lunch hour. During the drive, I’ll use the app to triple-check the schedules, and again, buy my ticket in advance. 

The past month, Oct. 31 deadline looming, I’ve tried to figure out how this would all work logistically. I timed the length of the transaction at the ticket machine — not even counting how long it’d take to walk over to one — and found it to be just under a minute. But even half a minute decides whether or not you’ll make your train; I’ve seen, on more than one occasion, people barely missing those sliding doors because they took a few extra seconds to tap on with their Clipper card. 

And the first time I tried this practice run, both ticket machines on the San Mateo southbound platform failed — a malfunction that would have left me stranded without a proper payment form if it were just two weeks later. 

At Hayward Park, there isn’t even a ticket machine on the southbound platform — only on the northbound, because everyone, apparently, wants to go to San Francisco and no one wants to come back.

Now, Caltrain’s rationale for discontinuing the mobile app seems fair. First, with the launch of the Next Generation Clipper system, which aims to consolidate Bay Area transit agencies into one seamless platform, Caltrain must drop third-party mobile fare payment options. This already eliminates one of the major features of the app. Second, the Caltrain app vendor had increased its prices, and it would be $300,000 more expensive per year to renew the contract on Oct. 31, instead of just moving to a parking-only app. 

But as a youth rider, I can’t help but still feel a bit disgruntled. At 17, I’m eligible for $1 one-way tickets and $2 day passes, and now, I only have two options to receive that discount: arrive at the station early enough to get a paper ticket, or obtain a Youth Clipper card. 

Understandably, procuring a Youth Clipper card isn’t as simple, because there needs to be some proof of age to qualify. And so, I can’t just download a card to my Apple Wallet or purchase one at a Caltrain ticket machine — which adds another layer of inconvenience. 

The sudden notice with which this announcement came, and the unpredictability of ticket machines at times, with potential for long lines and malfunctions, has left me rather disappointed. With the sheer number of advancements to Caltrain in the past year, discontinuing the mobile app and sacrificing youth convenience — although to a minor extent — just feels antithetical to the values of accessibility that Caltrain has championed. The more Caltrain modernizes, the more bizarre it seems that something as simple as buying a ticket as a teenager has become this difficult. 

Emma Shen is a senior at Aragon High School in San Mateo. Student News appears in the weekend edition. You can email Student News at news@smdailyjournal.com.