When financial assistance staffer Adrianna Wilson leaves her home along Martha Layne Collins Blvd., one of 15 Brighton Center’s Opportunity House apartments for qualifying degree-seeking young adults, she often rides the bus.

“I’m a part of the Section 8 [housing] right on the outskirts of campus next to the old Callahan building, and so I just take the bus from there and back,” Wilson said.

Public transit commuters, like Wilson, heading to and from Northern Kentucky University, may see changes to how they take the bus to school starting Nov. 7, when the Transit Authority of Northern Kentucky (TANK) will complete changes to its route network, a process which has been in the works for over a year.

Jenny Kammes, TANK’s Marketing Manager, says the transit authority expects these changes to “have a neutral to positive impact for most NKU students,” depending on where they live.

“For student commuters living in the Highland Heights area, services will remain essentially the same as they are today. Route 25 will continue to connect Highland Heights and NKU to Newport and Cincinnati, and will operate with 30-minute frequency as it does today,” Kammes said.

Student commuters in parts of Kenton and Campbell counties can expect a quicker trip to school starting in early November, with wait times dropping from an hour to 30 minutes along certain routes.

Kammes said that, with the current routes 3, 7, and 12, running every hour, the frequency of these routes will now increase to operate every 30 minutes for both weekdays and weekends, serving Ludlow and Bromley, Latonia and parts of Covington, and Bellevue through Dayton.

The increased frequency means that passengers in parts of Covington, Newport and downtown Cincinnati will be in what TANK is calling a “high-frequency corridor” with buses running every seven to eight minutes.

Riders using Route 1 from Boone and Kenton County heading to downtown Cincinnati will notice a bus route extension to have a new final stop at St. Elizabeth Healthcare in Fort Thomas, via Newport.

The route will no longer continue as Route 25 after passing through downtown Cincinnati, meaning some students will have to switch buses to get to and from school, when a transfer was previously not required.

“Any students commuting from Florence will need to make a transfer…from Route 1 to Route 25 to reach NKU. This can be done at stops in Covington, Cincinnati, and Newport where those routes will overlap,” Kammes said.

The likely reason behind TANK splitting Routes 1 and 25 was due to Route 1 suffering from “poor on-time performance, with only 64% of trips arriving on time” according to a March 2026 170-page report detailing TANK’s services and changes.

For students like Wilson, the decision to split the routes up is a welcomed one based on her travel needs, which should make Route 25 more consistently on time.

“I’m not too offended by it,” Wilson said. “I get out of work at 4:30 [p.m.]. I don’t get on the bus to get home until about 5:30 [p.m.].”

Route 7 will now continue as a Route 25 once it passes through Cincinnati, according to TANK’s service changes. This means student commuters in Covington and Latonia no longer need to switch buses to get to school.

TANK’s microtransit service, “TANK Plus,” a rideshare service with some similarities to rideshare apps like Lyft or Uber, is seeing an expansion of its service zone to include the Village Green Shopping Center on U.S. 27, along with implementing “a six-mile distance cap designed to improve trip efficiency” to its service, according to TANK.

Additional changes announced by TANK include cutting Route 16 serving parts of Newport and Fort Thomas, along with the Southbank Shuttle which covers parts of Covington, downtown Cincinnati, and Newport.

Finally, TANK announced the changing of route schedules “to better reflect traffic conditions and actual travel times,” although no specifics were mentioned.

TANK previously noted that riders may expect “detours, lane shifts and possible delays over the next several years” to bus routes as a result of construction work on the Brent Spence Companion Bridge.

The service changes came following feedback received from an online survey with over 1,000 respondents during October 2025, as well as calls, physical cards, social media comments, and direct conversation with TANK drivers, along with the counties of Boone, Kenton, and Campbell approving their combined $22.2 million TANK funding increase for the 2027 fiscal year.

Kammes says the increase in funding for TANK from these counties will benefit those relying on transit to get around, along with improving Northern Kentucky’s transit network.

“[The increase in TANK’s funding] is allowing us to make improvements to our services to better meet the needs of transit-dependent people in Northern Kentucky,” Kammes said. “The changes being made will help make our network more useful for current and future riders, while also increasing the efficiency of many of our routes.”

In previous semesters, students, faculty and visitors on campus may have noticed signs for an “NKU Shuttle,” those signs and the buses draped in Norse colors are no more due to the shuttle’s cancellation.

“The NKU Shuttle was a route that was fully funded and designed by the university. TANK was contracted to provide the service. The removal of the shuttle was a decision made by NKU leadership,” Kammes said.

An official statement from NKU said, “NKU discontinued the campus shuttle service following the closure of the East Village residence halls along its route.”

Due to the closures of Callahan Hall and Northern Terrace, the stops were no longer used, meaning ridership would change and the shuttle would be “no longer necessary,” according to the statement.

“The university continues to assess campus transportation needs and explore options that best serve our students, faculty, staff and visitors,” the statement said.

Even though the East Residential Village dorms were shut down, the Opportunity House apartments where Wilson resides did not, meaning the loss of the shuttle route will impact her.

“It is unfortunate,” Wilson said. “They don’t have any students that are over on that side of campus anymore. … There’s only 16 of us that live at my building and only eight of us go here.”

Following the upcoming November changes, Kammes said TANK does not have “any specific plans for additional service changes in the near future.”

“We tend to make at least minimal service changes every few years…Prior to any future service changes, we would announce the proposed changes well in advance and hold an outreach campaign to collect and evaluate public comment on the changes before implementing anything,” Kammes said.