GoBG has a lot of things on the move including a new look, new buses, route changes, and much more.
GoBG has acquired five new buses to serve the community. Two are larger buses with additional seating that require drivers to have CDLs and four are smaller buses that do not require drivers to have a CDL. These buses have been wrapped with the newest designs and have been in service for the past few months. This upgrade brings a higher quality and better feel to the rides our passengers deserve.
Community engagement is very important to GoBG. The goal is to communicate the services available across the community regardless of who you are and where you come from, because everyone deserves safe reliable transportation to get them where they need to go. GoBG has participated in a number of events this year including El Dia De Nino, Duncan Hines, New Americans, as well as Americorps Senior Fair. More events are planned for the future with the next being for Refugee Services.
On the numbers and hard facts side of things GoBG has seen a nearly 14% increase from 70k to 80k in ridership for the fiscal year! With this increase in ridership, GoBG has been testing out having multiple buses on route 4 to gauge how the community will respond to lower wait times. This reduces the wait from one hour to 30 minutes, depending on where the rider departed the bus. So far, since the inception and execution of this plan, GoBG has had over 100+ riders use the second bus indicating that the community enjoys and is utilizing this service.
The Bowling Green-Warren County Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) has signed an agreement in the amount of $120,000 with SRF Consulting Group, Inc., headquartered in Minneapolis, MN, to develop a Transit Development Plan encompassing the City of Bowling Green’s GoBG Transit and Western Kentucky University’s Topper Transit systems. SRF was chosen by the selection committee develop a comprehensive Transit Development Plan (TDP) to evaluate the service structure of each transit system (GoBG Transit and Topper Transit) and examine the potential to improve service efficiency and effectiveness for the entire community through comprehensive route design, fare structures/fare media, operations planning, and capital asset planning and management. This will be done in partnership with the City and WKU. Work will begin in July and is scheduled to be completed by the first of the year. This plan is federally funded with 20% match from the City of Bowling Green.
Also continuing is funding for transit marketing support. Funding for this effort increased $20,000 in fiscal year 2026 to $45,000 for fiscal year 2027(July 1, 2026, to June 30, 2027). Passage Creative is the contracted firm who will provide services including: Social Media Management, Bus Rider Education material, Website Upgrades and management, and Design Changes (additional bus wraps and route map updates). This plan is federally funded with 20% match from the City of Bowling Green.
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