There was a widespread outage in the Clipper system Tuesday morning that was impacting commuters on BART, Muni, and Caltrain, but many were just treated to free rides.

The Clipper card system went down sometime around 7 am Tuesday, and an alert subsequently was posted to X. Clipper is used for payment by 24 different transit agencies around the Bay.

"The Clipper system is experiencing an outage on all operators this morning. Please be prepared to pay your fare with another form of payment if required by your transit agency," the alert said.

Caltrain subsequently posted that it was "working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible."

As the Chronicle noted, BART fare gates were mostly being left open in order to avoid long lines and confusion, and riders were able to ride trains for free without tagging in and out.

The SFMTA also posted at 7:55 am that, for Muni trains, "Fare gates within the Market Street & Central subways will be open until the issue is resolved."

Obviously, with Muni buses, no one is paying attention anyway.

There's no word on the cause of the outage.

Today is the day that multiple agencies' fares went up, including Muni, which raised the base fare ten cents to $2.85, and Caltrain, which raised its base fare by 25 cents. It's not clear if these fare hikes were linked to the payment system going on the fritz.

This is a developing story.