Northern Kentucky Downtown Transit Map

Well, that last post got me to drawing, and here we are a few days later with a new map of TANK’s lines as they pass through Downtown Cincinnati, Covington, and Newport:

There are a couple minor lines missing yet, but I think I can pretty confidently say that 95% of everything important is on here. A couple things stand out:

The Shuttle, a line ostensibly for the purpose of easily getting just across the river, is not redundant with the other lines also going back and forth across the river through Downtown. Even if it were kept crossing the Roebling rather than the Clay Wade Bailey Bridge, it could still take mostly the same path as the other lines. This would significantly simplify the map, and make the transit system generally more accessible to new people by lowering the barrier to understanding how it works. It would also increase the frequency of trips going into Covington by adding the Shuttle’s trips to the combined trips of all of the other lines. When these lines don’t converge, it’s impossible to wait for all of them in the same place, dividing the effective frequency and increasing the average wait time.

One other thing worth noting: The TANK transit center’s location seems to require quite a bit of circling and doubling back for every line but the Shuttle. I’m sure it was placed where it was for a good reason(likely money and/or a friendly property owner), but it would seem to make a lot more sense to locate it somewhere south of the Clay Wade Bailey Bridge, perhaps right below it’s outlet on the two-way Mainstrasse where there are currently a couple of nearly empty parking lots and buildings that couldn’t possibly cost very much.

Something to think about when there’s a chance to relocate.