When adjustments to King County Metro’s bus network in South King County go live this summer, they will be a boon to riders, especially on nights and weekends. The changes, planned in the wake of Sound Transit’s new light rail stations in Kent, Des Moines, and Federal Way, will boost weekend service by a staggering 72%. Weekday service levels will jump by 51%, with many of the added trips allowing existing routes to run later into the evening.
Thanks to the new light rail connection to Federal Way that opened last December, King County Metro can make these gains by reinvesting service hours that would have been spent on rush hour bus trips to downtown. The service restructure is a major element of an agency-wide shift toward an all-day service network, which includes a focus on nights and weekends, helping workers with non-traditional schedules and riders who rely on Metro for much more than getting to work.
This week, the King County Council’s transportation committee got its first official look at the new bus network, ahead of Metro’s request next month for a green light to move forward with implementation. While the full changes won’t take effect until Metro’s service change in late August, the agency does plan to tweak service in March to allow its routes to better connect to 1 Line light rail stations and expand hours of operation on six routes throughout the area in advance of the full overhaul.
Overall, service levels across South King County are set to jump by 28%, as Metro restores 80,000 service hours that had been suspended since 2020, putting those hours to their best use in advancing the goal of a frequent all-day network.
With those resources, Metro will boost service on seven existing routes, and launch three brand new routes to make new connections across South King County. Two east-west corridors that connect directly to Link stations will see 15-minute service for the first time, and eight corridors will see new early morning and late night trips. Several routes that currently don’t operate on Saturday or Sunday will see weekend service for the first time.
Riders far from light rail stations in Burien, Kent, Auburn, and large swaths of Federal Way will see increased bus service that makes it easier to access the entire transit network.
When the full network is implemented, Routes 162, 165, 177 and DART 901 will be eliminated, with alternative options available for riders on those routes.
The new Route 164 and 166 will take over the 165’s full route between Burien and Green River College, with riders looking to travel past Kent Des Moines Station needing to transfer at the light rail station. The 162, a peak-only route between Lake Meridian in Kent and Downtown Seattle, will be replaced in favor of the all-day 168. The 177, a peak-only route between Federal Way and Downtown, will be eliminated in favor of a direct connection on light rail or Sound Transit’s 577 and 578 express buses, which will continue to complement Link service.
Metro’s DART routes, unlike its other routes, operate along a fixed path but also divert to pick up riders within an established service area. The new DART 902 would serve areas of Federal Way that aren’t covered by the existing DART 903, running on Dash Point Road and 35th Avenue SW through Twin Lakes. The 903 would see expanded hours of operation, including late into the evening seven days per week.
Metro also plans to launch two new Metro Flex microtransit zones in South King County this fall, established as two-year pilot programs. One zone would connect riders in Auburn with Downtown Auburn and its Sounder Station, and the other would serve riders to the north and east of Federal Way Downtown Station. Both areas have limited fixed-route service
Metro’s existing Flex zones in Renton and Tukwila are some of the agency’s highest performing on-demand service areas, with Tukwila’s zone seeing 2.5 rides per platform hour in 2025, and 2.4 rides per platform hour in Renton — compared to 1.6 rides per hour in Kirkland’s Juanita area and 0.6 rides per hour in the Northshore area around Lake Forest Park and Kenmore. The new Flex service zones will have to maintain relatively high levels of ridership through the end of their two-year pilot to continue into the future.
While riders will have to wait until after the FIFA World Cup to see these changes finally take effect, the wait looks poised to be worth it.
Ryan Packer has been writing for The Urbanist since 2015, and currently reports full-time as Contributing Editor. Their beats are transportation, land use, public space, traffic safety, and obscure community meetings. Packer has also reported for other regional outlets including BikePortland, Seattle Met, and PubliCola. They live in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle.
