Lawrence City Commissioner Mike Dever has a theory about why some people don’t ride the city’s bus system.

“Some people liken trying to figure out the various transit routes to programming the space shuttle,” Dever said. “I’ve always thought if you can make it easier, you’ll get more people to use it.”

Dever and Kansas University transit leaders are hoping a new map and a new route will do the trick.

Later this week, city and university officials will begin distributing a new “guide to ride” publication that will for the first time list the routes and schedules of both city and KU buses on a single map.

The new publication highlights an agreement made last year that allows people with a city bus pass to ride the university bus system for free, and allows students and faculty with a KU ID card to ride city buses for free. The two systems also honor each other’s transfer passes.

The new map, it is hoped, will make it easier for riders to see how they can transfer between buses to get to more areas of the city and the university.

“If somebody wanted to get from one side of town to another, they sometimes had to go to two different sources of information,” said Robert Nugent, the city’s public transit administrator. “Now they won’t have to.”

On Monday, the city and university also will launch a new jointly operated route that they believe will speed up trip times for some riders. The city will discontinue its Route 8 and it will be replaced with the new jointly operated Route 11.

The route will run from South Iowa Street to the KU campus and to downtown. The new route will run every 30-minutes, while Route 8 ran every 80 minutes.

“If you were using the old Route 8, you would have to plan ahead basically an hour,” Nugent said. “Now, you can use it almost at the spur of the moment.”

Dever believes the changes to the transit systems will open up more opportunities for the city and KU to create a coordinated transit system.

The city and the university recently agreed to explore the possibility of operating a joint maintenance facility for buses. Dever said he also believes KU and the city will discuss creating other jointly operated routes. He said joint routes along Sixth Street and other major corridors in the city likely should be studied in an effort to improve the speed of the systems.

“I really do believe we’re not trying to repackage the same old product,” Dever said. “We’re trying to create something new here.”