Bay Area Essentials
- Use Clipper to pay. You can set it up in your phone transit wallet.
- Tap when you get on. (For BART and CalTrain also tap when you get off).
- Transit app is accurate. It may try to sell you AC tickets. Don’t. Just use Clipper.
January 2024, November 2024, April 2025
Riding
SF is one of the easiest articles to write, because the transit generally works how you expect.
Set up Clipper on your phone (Apple Wallet: click + then Transit Card). Once you have Clipper set up, you can ride pretty much anything. You add a balance to the card in Apple Wallet, and it just deducts the right amount, automatically figuring out distances, transfers, etc. It’s pretty seamless (except on the cable car; I had to open Clipper in my wallet to get it to scan right). Keep at least $10 balance and you’re good most anywhere.
You can also do a physical card, but I find the phone app super convenient, especially when I need to add value.
There are a lot of different transit agencies and routes, and it can be a bit confusing which to take. The Transit app is pretty great at finding you an efficient route. If you’re downtown, you might be able to take bart, a fast Muni Metro train, a slower above-ground Muni Metro streetcar, a bus, or a cable car to get to your destination.
Just tap on, and you’re good to go. Bart and CalTrain have distance-based fares so you have to tap again when you get off. There might be a higher authorization on your card for a bit, which gets refunded once you tap off.
Muni Metro is interesting; downtown you’ll tap at the station, but if you’re further away you’ll tap the reader as you enter the train. As long as you’ve tapped at one time or another you’re fine.
Compared to many other American cities, SF’s transit is on the pricy side. The ferries and cable cars are 8 bucks (I call it a Tourist Surcharge), and BART charges you by distance. Regular buses and Muni Metro are just $2.50 though. I was there 3 days and spent almost $50. But I was also riding a bit extra for research purposes.
BART
BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) is one of the faster ways to get around, for medium distances. Muni Metro will probably handle your shorter trips, and CalTrain your very long ones.
BART charges you by distance. I went from Oakland to downtown SF, and that was $4.05. You need to tap when you enter the system and when you exit, so it knows how much to charge you.
Ferries
The ferries are a bit tricky to find. I don’t know if it’s due to construction or if it’s normal. If you’re at the ferry terminal, on your right is a cluster of buildings for Golden Gate Ferry. The ferries do not leave from that building. They leave from a different pier on the left. Once you find that, the employees will separate you into an appropriate queue.
The signage for the ferries is poor, and there are a lot of unwritten rules. I saw ferry employees getting upset with bicyclists for standing slightly to the right instead of to the left when they were in line.
I think there are other ferry companies to other destinations, but I didn’t ride them.
The ferries are very nice, plenty of seating, onboard electrical outlets for you to charge your devices, small bar with food and drinks and I think booze.
Sausalito is an absolute tourist trap. But that has nothing to do with transit.
Cable Cars
Cable cars are kinda a tourist thing, not terribly fast, but great at hills, and really fun to ride. The fare, at 8 bucks, is as steep as the hills it climbs. Har har har.
It took a WHILE for the car to come, and a while longer for it to depart. They really aren’t concerned with efficiency or frequency here.
There’s a $13 day pass as well. I don’t know if Clipper will automatically figure that out and just charge you $5 for your second ride, or if you should buy a separate day pass ticket instead. A driver or attendant could probably answer that question. I just rode once; when we departed, an employee came around with a handheld reader for Clipper. Unlike all my other Clipper trips, for this one I had to open my wallet and have Clipper on-screen for it to work (it tried to pull up my credit card instead).
Muni Metro
The Muni Metro trains are pretty amazing. They run underground downtown with raised platforms, and outside of downtown they run at street level, and you need to walk up stairs to get in. When the train goes from underground to above-ground. the inside of the car, by the doors, converts from flat to stairs, making a cautionary beep beep beep.
In general, these are pretty efficient. I rode one all the way to the end of the line in Ocean Beach, and the ride was pretty monotonous, felt like it stopped too much and took longer than I expected. But it got me there. And it’s kinda just a product of the geography. If you’re in a flat area, you can put stops several blocks apart, but with how hilly SF is, each further block between stops is a big schlep.
Amtrak Connections
Irritatingly, Amtrak kinda snakes its way through the bay area without making many easy connections to local transit. It’s especially difficult with Amtrak’s long-distance Coast Starlight, which only stops at San Jose, Oakland, and Emeryville.
BART to Oakland
The Lake Merritt BART station is somewhat close to the Oakland - Jack London Amtrak station. Somewhat being the key word. It’s about a 10-15 minute walk. It’s not the worst neighborhood, but also not the best. I was watching my back a bit on the Lake Merritt end. There is a good coffee house close to the Amtrak station, but the neighborhood is still kinda sparse.
BART to Richmond
It really feels like you should be able to take BART directly to/from an Amtrak station. And you can! Unfortunately, despite Amtrak and Bart crossing close to each other several times, the Coast Starlight doesn’t offer any direct connections to BART.
You can connect from BART directly to other Amtrak lines, such as the Capitol Corridor (which I love). One of these connections is in Richmond.
Getting to Richmond was easy. I just rode the BART to the end of the line. It took a while, but it was fine.
The Richmond station was a bit tricky to navigate, but mostly because I wasn’t paying close attention and walked past the Amtrak sign a couple times.
There is, unfortunately, almost nothing at all near the Richmond stop. There was a convenience store, and that was all, and it didn’t feel like the best neighborhood to poke around.
Don’t get there early, unless you bring a book or like playing phone games.
Amtrak Bus to/from Emeryville
Amtrak does run a bus to downtown San Francisco, from Emeryville. If you book a ticket to San Francisco, Amtrak will suggest a two-ticket ride, that takes you first to Emeryville by train, then from Emeryville to San Francisco by bus.
The bus coordinates with the train. It will wait for the train if the train is late. This was the best option when I was riding the northbound Coast Starlight, which arrives around 9pm.
The bus was fine. It let me off near the Salesforce Center, a couple blocks from a MUNI stop.
Emeryville itself… there’s not much of interest near the Amtrak stop. Kinda a theme, I’m finding.
CalTrain to/from San Jose
CalTrain is longer-distance regional rail that runs between San Jose and San Francisco. On one trip, I took Amtrak to San Jose, stayed the night, then took CalTrain to San Francisco the next day. It was easy, fast, and efficient. Tap with Clipper as you get on, expect a fare checker to scan your phone (or whatever you paid with) during the journey, and tap when you get off.
Have some extra value on Clipper if you’re riding CalTrain. If I recall correctly, it temporarily charges you the amount of the longest trip possible when you board. Then when you exit, it calculates your actual fare and refunds you the difference.
Make extra sure that you tap on the way out, or you’ll be charged for a longer trip than you took.