Wednesday brought yet another round of major BART service disruptions, with a disabled train forcing single-tracking through the city and leaving commuters stranded on platforms wondering — once again — what exactly their fare dollars are paying for.

But here's the part that really stings: if you're one of the unlucky riders who tapped in, realized your train wasn't coming anytime soon, and decided to bail, BART may have charged you the maximum fare for the trouble. That's right — the system's "excursion fee" policy means that if you tap in and tap out at the same station outside a narrow 30-minute window, you can get hit with a charge as if you'd ridden all the way to SFO.

As one Bay Area commuter put it, they once missed a train, decided to drive instead, and got "shafted" with a max fare charge to SFO — despite never boarding. Another rider said that when they asked a station agent about a refund, they were told, "That's not true. That's not a thing that happens," and were dismissed without a second thought.

To be fair, the excursion fee exists for a reason — it prevents fare cheaters from gaming the distance-based pricing system with multiple tickets. And BART only recently added a 30-minute grace period for Clipper users last August. Before that, tapping out even 20 seconds after tapping in triggered the maximum charge. Progress, apparently.

Some riders report that BART employees hand out reentry stickers during major delays, which is a genuinely decent accommodation — if you know to ask. But that's the problem with BART's approach to customer service: the good policies exist in whispers while the punitive ones hit your wallet automatically.

This is a transit system that carries hundreds of thousands of Bay Area workers and runs on billions in public funding. When service fails — as it did Wednesday — the absolute minimum expectation should be that riders aren't financially penalized for BART's own breakdowns. An automatic fare reversal for same-station exits during declared service disruptions would be trivially easy to implement.

Instead, we get a system that treats paying customers like suspects and delays like routine. BART leadership loves talking about ridership recovery post-pandemic. Here's a thought: stop charging people for rides they never took.