Jeff Bremer loves the bus.

The Kansas University graduate student said he chose his apartment because it sits on the route for the KU on Wheels bus system. He plans his days around the route schedules.

“I can go some days without driving,” Bremer said Monday at the Kansas Union on campus. “I ride out here, do my work, then take the bus home.”

Despite Bremer’s fidelity and fondness for bus riding, he has never taken a trip on the T, the city’s bus system.

Now city and KU officials are combining forces to lure Bremer and his peers to city buses. Tonight, they’ll ask the Lawrence City Commission to approve a plan under which KU students could get a yearlong pass for the T by paying an extra $20 when they buy their $120 KU on Wheels pass this fall.

KU students would get expanded transit options; the city would get badly wanted bodies on the T.

“What it will do is hopefully increase ridership,” said Karin Rexroad, the city’s transit director. “There will be some increase in revenues, but it’s definitely a way to open up the community to students and increase our ridership by doing so.”

The T averages 918 riders a day, Rexroad said. But ridership always jumps during summer and holiday breaks when the KU system goes on hiatus.

KU last year issued 8,516 passes for its own bus program.

Raghavendra Adimulam, graduate student from Hyderabad, India, rides the T past Daisy Hill. Adimulam, on the bus Monday, is one of few Kansas University students to ride the Lawrence bus system to class.

“If we get 10 percent of that, that would be 850 students,” Rexroad said.

Danny Kaiser, director of KU’s Center for Campus Life, said students would benefit as well.

“It’s a great deal, from a KU student standpoint,” he said. “KU on Wheels provides a great resource for getting to, from and around campus. But it’s not designed to take you downtown or to the South (Iowa) shopping center. This is just an opportunity for students who are already used to riding the bus to broaden their experience.”

KU would get a cut of the money. The city would pay an estimated one-time start-up fee of $1,850 to set up the program with the Student Union Activities Office. The city also would pay a monthly $50 administrative fee and give SUA 20 percent of each $20 student permit.

“It seems like a win-win situation,” Mayor David Dunfield said Monday. “I think it has the potential of increasing ridership for both systems, and that’s a good thing.”

Officials have talked for years about combining the bus systems in some fashion.

“I think this is just a step in that direction,” Dunfield said. “There will be more moves in the future to make the relationship even closer.”

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That would be fine by Bremer, who said the program would make him take a second look at the T.

“It means I wouldn’t have to worry about parking downtown,” he said. “I’ll have to get a T schedule and take a look.”