Do NOT try to jump on the train as the doors are closing. You won’t be cut in half by the closing doors or anything like that, but you WILL be publicly shamed by the conductor.Instead, there is a circular scanner on the top of the fare gate and Clipper cards need only be placed on top of them to open the gate. As my friend and I learned the somewhat-embarrassing way, Clipper cards should NOT be inserted into the ticket slot. Your ticket will be sucked into the gate, but don’t worry, it will pop back out on top of the gate. Paper tickets have to be inserted into a little slot. Once you’ve determined how much value to add to your ticket, printed it out, and collected your receipt, you can proceed to the fare gate. (I was really hesitant to insert my credit card without having already selected the amount I wanted to add.) The automatic amount listed for each ticket is $20, but you can add or subtract in $1 increments, which isn’t immediately apparent. After inserting your credit card, you then choose the amount of value to add to your ticket. These machines are some of the least intuitive machines of their type I have ever used. So, if you’re planning to take more than 6 trips, then the Clipper Card is the more economical choice. And what they don’t advertise in the BART station (at least my tired brain didn’t see this stated anywhere) is that there is an additional 50¢ charge per trip that you take with a blue paper ticket. The paper tickets are non-reloadable paper tickets. A Clipper Card is a plastic card that is reloadable and costs $3 in addition to the value you want to add. There are separate machines, one for tickets and one for Clipper cards. Printing Your Ticket. Once you arrive at the BART station, you will join the long queue of confused-looking people standing in front of what look like ATM’s.metro, but if you’re confused while in the BART station, you won’t be the only one. The BART is certainly not as user-friendly as the D.C. Of course, using public transit can sometimes be intimidating, especially if you’re new to the city or if, like me, you have a dislike of germs and crowds. (Compare this to the $34 and 40-minute Lyft ride I checked out today.) A one-way trip from SFO to anywhere downtown is ~$10. The BART is San Francisco’s metro system. There are several forms of transportation which will take you to SFO, but the cheapest by far (if you’re coming from downtown) is the BART. Perhaps the most expensive trip you’ll make is the trip to/from the airport to downtown San Francisco. But there is still time to make the most of your transportation budget! Hopefully by this point, you’ve already figured out flights and hotels and poster printing. Between hotels, flights, transportation, food, registration, and poster printing charges, things can get hectic quickly, especially if your university is infamous for taking months to issue reimbursements. If you’re a grad student like me, then conferences present a unique budgeting challenge: how do you maneuver the world of per diems and reimbursements while trying to maintain your sanity and enjoy the city you’re visiting.
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