Riding TANK buses to Northern Kentucky University has become easier for students, faculty and staff as the College of Informatics has teamed with TANK and Google to provide maps of the bus routes around Northern Kentucky.

This has been an ongoing process between TANK and the Infrastructure Management Institute (IMI) in NKU’s College of Informatics, as the institute also launched Wi-Fi on TANK buses.

‘The idea spawned originally from an initial grant from IMI,’ Eric Rolf said.
Rolf, a junior information systems major feels that the maps will help TANK get more people to ride its buses as well as being environmentally.

‘One of the main factors of making this happen was to be ‘green’,’ he said.’Another factor was that people were intimidated by riding the bus because they didn’t know where they would go. With this system it will help people know where they are going.’

Gina Douthat, Director of Communications for TANK has seen the growth of a relationship between TANK and the College of Informatics from the beginning.

‘This project was the third part of an agreement between the two parties,’ she said.
‘It was a no brainer with the College of Informatics on this .’

With the new system of planning bus trips with TANK, Douthat said the program will help simplify the bus system.

‘Before Google Trip Planner, people would have to know which bus to get on,’ Douthat said. ‘Now with the new system all you need to know is where you’re going. It gets rid of the fear factor.’

Since its release Jan. 9, Rolf said that there have been 3,000 queries on trip planner.

To access the Google Trip Planner, log on to www.tankbus.org. Type in your starting address and ending address and at which time’ to depart. Once that has been completed, it will go to Google Trip Planner and it will give you when you will depart from location and when you will arrive at destination. The information will also compare the fee for riding the bus versus using a car for the same trip.