On Transportation Logos

You would think that airlines would have the most creative and best logos in the transportation industry. In Canada, at least, you would be wrong.

Let’s look at the airlines first. The biggest carrier is Air Canada. A very simple name for a national carrier. I am linking to their Wikipedia page so you can see the logo in the top right corner. Black letters in a boring font then a red ring with a stylized maple leaf inside. They couldn’t have ripped off the flag of Canada much more if they tried. I guess it gets their message across.

The other big airline in Canada is WestJet. Their hub is in Calgary. This is an airline started more for the “disenfranchised” west of Canada thus it’s name. Their name on their logo is dark blue, in a boring font. It has a light blue maple leaf with dark blue in its southwest corner. We get it. You favour the south west of Canada.

Flair Airlines is a discount carrier It has a its name in boring black font. As a flair they don’t capitalize either word in its name. At least that is quite a flair compared to its symbol of a black circle. Another flair is that the word flair contains the word air.

We shall move out of the airline industry and over to the train industry. The national train carrier is Via Rail. Via is a really cute name for a travel means. The very thick Via font is in yellow for easy visibility. This symbol is also the same upside down. Sometimes they use the symbol of a red maple leaf, the same as the maple leaf on the flag because it is owned by the government of Canada.

Next up is Go Transit. Again a very simple name for a means of transportation. This is the transit into the city of Toronto by a number of different lines to nearby cities and bedroom communities. The very blocky green letters of the Go are rather stylish and the negative space of the letters, makes a sideways T for Transit.

Third in line is my local rapid transit in Kitchener-Waterloo (and hopefully soon, Cambridge). This light rail line has the name of the Ion. That means go in Greek. You can see the logo on the upper right side as with all these Wikipedia links. It’s blue and green styled symbol is almost the same upside down, kind of like the Via symbol. It almost looks like cursive writing.

Rail transportation logos in Canada are way more interesting than the air transportation logos. I am looking forward to the high speed rail line in Canada, which is supposed to link Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City, having a really cool logo. Please don’t disappoint like the airlines.

GO trains using ‘obsolete’ crash-recording devices

Someone at Metrolinx is leaking A LOT to Trillium in the last few months. They are clearly concerned about security practices.

https://www.thetrillium.ca/news/municipalities-transit-and-infrastructure/go-trains-using-obsolete-crash-recording-devices-12209454

#gotrains #gotransit #metrolinx

GO Transit GP40TC locomotive #9807 leads a westbound train of single-level coaches out of Scarborough GO Station while a CN Turbotrain rumbles past.

⌚July 1976 📷 Richard Glaze

#Railways #Railfan #HighspeedRail #GOTransit #Toronto #Scarborough #Metrolinx #CNRail #VIARail #Canada

GO Transit GM "New Look" bus #1115 waits to pick up passengers at Finch's Regional Bus Terminal.

⌚April 6, 1980 📷Unknown/John Knight collection

#GOTransit #GOBus #PublicTransit #Bus #Toronto