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JACKSON, Tenn. — Sept. 29, 2020 — A concept developed by a team of 51���� students at the 2020 Hub City Innovation Cup in March has resulted in a sizeable grant from the AARP to the city of Jackson to improve its bus transportation system.

Carly Bryant, Grace Ingram, Lauren Kinzinger, Callie Wright and Sydney Zemke proposed an idea for a mobile app for the Jackson Transit Authority that would track the location of buses in real time so passengers would know when the vehicles would arrive at their scheduled stops.

The Hub City Innovation Cup is an annual competition hosted by Union’s McAfee School of Business in which teams of university students must take the competition theme and create a concept that improves life in Jackson. Teams from Union, Lane and the University of Memphis-Lambuth were among the 40 students who participated in 2020, with the team of Bryant, Ingram, Kinzinger, Wright and Zemke winning the first-place prize of $3,000, provided by Jackson Energy Authority, for their idea.

“My team and I, we rode the buses just to see what it was like,” Kinzinger said. “You had to have exact cash, and the machine where you paid was really out of date and had no directions. So, we had to get directions from a fellow bus rider. It was a whole mess.”

Lauren Kirk, director of performance management for the city of Jackson, was one of the judges for the Hub City Innovation Cup and was impressed with the concept for the mobile app. She acknowledged that the JTA system is outdated, with passengers having to call the JTA office to ask where a bus is. In addition, the only maps passengers have access to are PDF downloads on the JTA website.

“It’s not very accessible or dignifying,” Kirk said.

That’s why she was grateful for the work of the Union students in bringing the issue to light.

“We felt like they had done a lot of market research as well as hands-on research – riding the bus system themselves, interacting with people on the buses and giving it that client perspective,” Kirk said. “And, we felt like what they proposed was pretty doable for the city.”

The app would also provide a mobile payment option for passengers. Currently, passengers must have exact change for their fares on JTA buses.

In May, Kirk discovered an opportunity for the city to apply for an AARP grant. The city’s application was accepted, and the AARP grant of $35,500 for Jackson is the largest grant the organization has ever given to a city in Tennessee through its Community Challenge program, Kirk said.

The grant will fund hardware installation on 12 city buses, Wi-Fi connectivity on the buses and will provide for software development for the app. The initial plans are for the app to provide live bus tracking immediately, with the possibility of adding mobile payment options once more funding is available.

Kirk said she was grateful for the Union students who developed the idea and inspired the process that has led to the concept being implemented.

“They definitely helped us draw attention to the issue,” Kirk said. “They helped us see this as a priority issue and also see it as a feasible project that we could present to a grant funder.”

Jason Garrett, dean of the McAfee School of Business at Union, said the team’s work proved that university students are able to develop and present workable ideas under deadline pressure.

“They can do things that are not only worthy to be seen in front of the community -- they can actually help improve the community as well,” Garrett said.

“This generation of students, if we give them a specific goal and a fixed time horizon to do it, and then give them enough guard rails to keep the train on the tracks, they produce some amazing results,” Garrett continued. “I think this generation is very good at bringing information from lots of different sources and producing a good result very quickly.”

Kinzinger said it was rewarding that her team’s idea will have a positive impact on residents of Jackson by making the transportation system more accessible and reliable for people who need to use it for a variety of purposes.

“It’s really nice to see it come to fruition,” she said.