Here's a fun one: Bay Area transit agencies are now hemorrhaging over $1 million a month in credit card processing fees tied to Clipper card transactions. A few years ago, those monthly fees were comfortably below $250,000. Then riders adapted — as riders do — and the costs exploded.

The culprit? A combination of smaller, more frequent Clipper reloads and the rollout of tap-to-pay credit card options at fare gates. Every time you tap your Visa instead of a pre-loaded Clipper card, the transit system eats a processing fee. Multiply that across millions of trips, and you've got a budget hole that would make even Sacramento blush.

What's maddening is how predictable this was. When MTC greenlit tap-to-pay, the interchange fee problem was literally a known point of contention in the decision-making process. They did it anyway, apparently without a serious plan to manage the cost. As one Bay Area commuter put it: "I find it insane that no one at the transit authority considered this possibility." Another local was more blunt, suggesting MTC is "full of incompetent buffoons" — harsh, but when you're watching a million bucks a month vanish into Visa's pockets, the shoe fits.

To make matters worse, some riders report that Clipper's own app and kiosks have been so unreliable that they were essentially forced onto credit card tapping. One local transit rider described months of broken kiosks and failed mobile loads before finally giving up and switching to Apple Wallet. "This is not my problem," they said. Hard to argue.

Look, nobody's against modernizing fare payment. But adopting a system that funnels transit dollars straight to credit card processors — while your own loading infrastructure is crumbling — isn't modernization. It's negligence with a slick UI.

There are solutions here. Incentivize larger Clipper loads. Stack auto-reloads to reduce transaction counts. Negotiate better interchange rates. But all of that requires competent management, which appears to be the real supply shortage in Bay Area transit.

Riders didn't create this problem. They responded rationally to the options they were given. The bill, as always, lands on the public.