CORRECTION: The original version of this article contained some inaccuracies about county taxation policies. The relevant lines have been corrected. –LINK nky editorial, Jan. 29, 2026.
The Transit Authority of Northern Kentucky revealed preliminary plans for changes to its route and service structure at a special virtual meeting on Wednesday night.
The meeting followed roughly six months of public input, and although the changes on display had not been finalized, it provided a window into how TANK services may change in the future.
Although some routes will likely see reductions or even disappear entirely, the presenters wanted to emphasize one point: “Almost all customers will continue to have service.”
Those remarks were delivered by Thomas Wittman, a transportation planner from Nelson Nygaard, a transit consulting firm based in Boston that’s working with TANK to develop feasible revisions given TANK’s budgetary constraints.
TANK was forthright with its issues at the meeting. Essentially, the cost of running services exceeds the amount of money it’s bringing in. Help from the federal government is declining, and over the past 10 years, it has been working to ensure it remains financially sustainable while providing as much service to the region as possible.
Current projections indicate that as much as a 10% service reduction might be required if the agency is unable to find a way to bolster its revenue. In July, it launched a project to assess its current service structure and gather public input about what the community needed.
The public input included public information-gathering sessions, both in person and virtually; an online survey, which, according to the presenters, received over 1,000 responses; and the distribution of literature at key transit sites throughout the region.
The public input came away with several key insights:
- Regular busing, not TANK’s curb-to-curb services, are still what people most want
- People were concerned about loss of service, especially in Dayton and Bellevue along TANK Route 12
- The community strongly supports continued services of the Southbank Shuttle
- People didn’t want more service cuts
So what may or may not change?
TANK did not request any changes to operating times, and many routes would remain unchanged. However, one key change that would likely occur is the reduction in the number of routes that would travel across the river directly to Cincinnati, namely routes 5, 7 and 8.
Those routes would not be eliminated altogether, but they would no longer go across the river. Instead, commuters would need to connect to routes 1, 25 or 3 at the Covington Transit Center if they wanted to travel to Cincinnati.
Routes 16, 39X and 40X would be consolidated into other routes. In a worst-case scenario, routes 25X, 30X, and the Southbank Shuttle would have to be eliminated entirely, but the presenters emphasized that none of these changes had been finalized yet. The earliest any of them would occur would be 2027, and even then there would be new rounds of public outreach and input before any changes took effect.
TANK staff will present its preliminary plan to its Board of Directors next month.
The presenters opened up the meeting to questions after their presentation. Many of the questions concerned specific routes, but some people asked about ways to bolster TANK’s finances.
One attendee, for instance, asked if TANK could ask for a sales tax levy like those that have been approved by voters in Hamilton County across the river.
Nope, said TANK General Manager Gina Douthat. Compared to Ohio, Kentucky communities are constrained in raising sales taxes.
“We legally cannot go out and ask for a sales tax in Northern Kentucky, [or] the entire state,” Douthat said. “The counties would have to do that on our behalf,… which is not a very popular thing right now.”
The three counties contribute roughly $20.5 million altogether to TANK’s budget. Cities and counties are not allowed to levy sales taxes at all, and the likelihood of raising property taxes at the county level is dependent upon the political will of county elected representatives and their constituents.
It’s worth noting that increased transportation options are a desired community priority that frequently arises in county comprehensive planning processes.
Another attendee asked if TANK staff was attempting to rally support for itself among local leadership. Douthat said that currently, TANK is mostly in a planning phase and is spending most of its time gathering information from the public. However, she did encourage the attendees to advocate on behalf of TANK if they felt its services were essential.
“What you can do is make sure that the people in your community that are in leadership positions understand how important TANK is to you,” Douthat said, “and that TANK is your link to a job or your link to getting to school for education purposes or to getting to the doctor or however you use TANK. Ensuring that other people understand that it’s important to you is really helpful to us when we’re talking to those elected officials.”
You can watch the full meeting below.