It's Full Speed Ahead for Translink

As you may notice by now, I blog a ton about Translink. But I like the program because I know how much potential it has to be successful and make it so much easier for our Bay Area.

As we just heard today, Translink will be on Caltrain on the 17th of August! And I have to give my kudos to SF Appeal for getting the word out first!

Even better things are just over the horizon for Translink. Word just came-out from SF Appeal that BART's first day on Translink is a big success! Even more exciting are the future projects that are coming-up soon.

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Would you like to learn more information about the future projects for Translink? It's all public information from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission's Translink Management Board. Here's the PDF of their PowerPoint presentation.

To give you a briefing on the good stuff, instead of looking at charts and money, here's what's coming up for Translink:

1. Today, 70% of Golden Gate Ferry trips are paid with the Translink card.
   
2. Installation of Samtrans Translink equipment will start approximately August 10th.
   
3. With Cubic buying out ERG, they will be upgrading Translink with new memory, be able to pay for parking at some San Francisco parking lots with the card, design a new Translink card, and others.
4. SFMTA/Muni will be starting installation of new metro gates in the Spring of 2010. Instead of paper tickets, SFMTA ticketing vending machines will issue "limited use" Translink cards, possibly similar to BART's magnetic tickets.
5. City CarShare will work with Translink to allow their customers to use Muni buses (I'm not sure how that will work).
6. BART ticket machines will have Translink functionality in mid 2010. They are testing-out this program right now.
7. VTA and Caltrain's ticketing machines will be used as Translink ticketing machines in the future, but they are going under the bidding process.

These sound like great future projects for Translink, especially that in less than a year, we will have more Translink add value machines by using BART ticketing machines!!!