In the River City

I'm spending the summer on a developmental assignment at the TARC, the public transit provider in Louisville, Kentucky.  Louisville is known, at least to Louisvillians, as the River City.  Of course, the nickname has been claimed by any number of other cities in the US as well as abroad.  The Ohio River is certainly a defining element of the city's geography, but the nickname doesn't do the transit agency any favors helping outsiders recognize what city it's serving.

When I told my colleagues I was spending the summer at the Transit Authority of River City, I mostly got one of two reactions: "Oh yeah, TARC... wait, where is that?" and "Hmm, never heard of it."

At the very least, TARC is just a made-up acronym, one without any unfortunate connotations like those its counterparts transit providers just up the Ohio River, TANK and SORTA of the Cincinnati region.  TARC also matches up with its sister agency, Parking Authority of River City or PARC, though the latter has a slightly less laudable task. Public provision of parking... ugh.

By far the coolest thing about TARC is its office building: