Monday, April 05, 2010

Good bye Translink; say hi to Clipper



The logo above is what you'll see as Translink transitions into Clipper in the next few months. This new logo will appear on Translink equipment as soon as later this month. On June 15, cards with the Clipper logo will be available to the public and all Translink and Clipper card users will go to clippercard.com to manage add add values to their cards.

Basically this is a rebranding effort. MTC wants to rebrand the card because it thinks the Translink name is too generic (Translink is the name of the transit system in Vancouver BC, for instance). The selection of the name Clipper is supposed to evoke historic Clipper ships (which explains the design of the new logo). The backend infrastructure will still be the same. If you have a Translink card, the card will work the same way after the transition. If you don't have one, you may be eligible to get a Clipper card for free (usually $5 for a card).

2 comments:

crzwdjk said...

To me, the name evokes the Clipper Chip, a failed crypto product that was designed for the primary purpose of enabling government snooping. And the free cards actually kind of annoy me. What, is the $5 I paid for mine some sort of early adopter tax? If I'd known I could get one for free, I would have waited.

accountablevta said...

The Translink cards are offered free at some places because these cards are scheduled to replace some of the paper passes.

The reason that they charge $5 for these cards is that they want the users to keep these cards and not lose them. These cards are not as cheap as those paper magnetic stripe tickets.