Starting August 29, King County Metro, Sound Transit, and Pierce Transit will be making changes to bus routes in south King County and Pierce County. Most of these changes are in response to the Federal Link Link Extension that opened in December 2025. Service changes in east and north King County will be discussed in future articles.
Across this sub-region, the biggest change is Sound Transit’s Route 574. Route 574 will be truncated at Federal Way Downtown station (instead of SeaTac) and will now run every 15 minutes. At the southern end of the route, the stop at Lakewood Transit Center will be replaced by a stop at Lakewood station.
Routes throughout south King and Pierce Counties will be adjusted in a few weeks. See full list of changes below, or skip to Burien and SeaTac, Kent and Des Moines, Auburn and Federal Way, Pierce County, or Night-Owl changes.
Burien and SeaTac
Route 121 will be partially restored to provide eight peak hour trips (four AM and four PM) between Burien Transit Center and downtown Seattle. This route will take just 37 minutes compared to 53 minutes on the H Line.
Route 156 will have a slightly revised routing on its trips between Southcenter and Kent Des Moines station. The route will no longer serve the McMicken Heights loop (dashed blue line on the map). The route will also have expanded service, running from 4am to 11pm on weekdays and 4:30am to 11pm on weekends.
DART Route 631 will now have weekend service. The route will operate the same schedule on Saturday and Sunday as it does during the week.
Kent and Des Moines
Route 164 is a new route that will replace the southern half of the current Route 165. Route 164 will run every 15 minutes during the day, every day. Some of the route’s northbound trips will continue to Route 166. Route 166 replaces the northern segment of Route 165. Buses will run every 15 minutes during peak hours and every 30 minutes during the rest of the day. Every southbound trip will continue to Route 164.
Route 168 will have a few additional trips added to provide 15 minute frequency during peak hours.
Auburn and Federal Way
Route 181 will have improved weekday frequency and addition trips that run until midnight.
Route 182 will have earlier and later trips each day and will now be through-routed with Route 187.
Route 183 will add service on Sunday and run earlier and later on weekdays and Saturday.
Route 187 will be adjusted to run on 320th St and Hoyt Rd in both directions. The route will through-run with Route 182.
DART Route 902 is a new route that will replace DART Route 901. Route 902 has a DART service area in Mirror Lake. Every Route 902 trip will continue to/from a Route 903 trip. DART Route 903 offers a southern route via SW Campus Dr back to Federal Way Downtown station. Route 903 will have increased frequency with trips running every 30 minutes.
King County Metro is introducing two new Metro Flex pilot areas in Federal Way and Auburn. The Federal Way area is anchored at Federal Way Downtown station while the Auburn area is set near Auburn station and transit center.
Pierce County
Pierce Transit’s network is relatively stable for this restructure. Route 11 is getting a new northbound trip at 2pm on weekdays and several other trip times have been adjusted to accommodate the new trip. Route 212 will have a new southbound trip on Sundays at 7:08pm. Pierce Transit is also adding a new westbound trip to Route 214 on Sundays at 8:44am. The agency is also adjusting the schedules for an assortment of routes to improve reliability and reduce transfer times. Sound Transit is removing routes 580 and 586 in Pierce County.
Night-Owl
South King and Pierce Counties have two big changes in overnight service. The A Line will now run every 30 minutes between midnight and 4am. Sound Transit is replacing Route 570 with Route 597. Route 597 will provide night-owl service every 30 minutes between Lakewood and Seattle, via Tacoma Dome and SeaTac.
Hopped on a 574 at Tacoma Dome yesterday, a couple minutes before a 594 arrived. I tracked the 594. It arrived at CID about the time I arrived in Tukwila, after a pretty smooth transfer to Link in Federal Way. I arrived in the CID 27 minutes after the 594.
Link is the wrong mode.
Link is the correct mode for many trips; it is not a strong mode for long intercity trips; the Link spine is faith based by the ST board. In fall 2027, I hope ST changes its south bus network to serve Federal Way station with a consolidated service via South 317th Street. The waits could be shorter both directions: South to Tacoma and north to Seattle (bus) or the several markets served by Link. With the fall 2026 network, waits are longer southbound. The Link travel time between IDS and TDS will be more than 70 minutes.
Link is the correct mode for many trips; it is not a strong mode for long intercity trips
For sure. Link is basically a metro. For a metro, you want lots of ridership per mile. You want every segment to have a lot of riders. This is clearly the case in the city. Think of the section between Northgate and Rainier Beach. Every trip combination is plausible and quite likely has hundreds if not thousands of riders. An express bus might be faster, but not a lot faster. Quite often Link is faster — at noon.
Now think of the section between 148th and Lynnwood. There aren’t that many people taking trips involving any of these combinations. Many of the trips are faster with an express bus. This is about half the length of the section within Seattle yet it just doesn’t work the same way.
Things get worse the farther out you go. Consider the section between 148th and Everett. Sure, there are some riders making trips between the stations, but not a lot. Again, a lot of the trips are considerably faster via an express bus.
This is why most metro lines around the world aren’t that big. They concentrate on the urban areas where there is a lot of point-to-point demand and travel is slow. For longer trips they use regional rail (on old tracks built decades ago) or they run express buses (on freeways that serve the suburbs well). This is the way most mass transit systems are built because it is the way most cities are built. One exception is L. A. — a gigantic, sprawling and surprisingly dense city. Anaheim and Long Beach are over 20 miles from Downtown L. A. and they aren’t alone. There is plenty of density in Long Beach, Anaheim and just about everywhere. This makes building a mass transit system a huge challenge. Link is being built as if we are L. A. — we aren’t.
” The Link travel time between IDS and TDS will be more than 70 minutes.”
It was nearly that from Federal Way to IDS. It will be closer to 90 between IDS and TDS. Twice what it takes the 594. I have no idea what ST was thinking.
The schefuled runtime from FWDS to IDS is 50 minutes. If you took the bus it is about 40 minutes. A 10 minute difference is not half the time like you claim.
With traffic it can easily be even worse on the bus. The train is consistent and mostly grade separate. If a future duwamish bypass is constructed, and or the train is sped up to 65mph on the freeway and grade separate segments it is easily competitive with the bus.
You are right. I was thinking I left FW at 11, arriving in IDS at 12:10. But that’s when I left TDS. My bad.
It still took 27 minutes longer by train, but midday Sunday is pretty ideal for the 594 on I-5.
No one in positions of power seem to care that Link travel times are bad once someone gets more than 15 miles outside of Downtown Seattle. And Downtown Everett and Tacoma Dome will be an extra degree of bad. But it looks good on a line diagram, which seems to be what the Board members care about most.
And let’s not get into how the train lines will run half of their routes mostly empty yet with crowding in central Seattle.
I recently rode route 570 between Seatac and downtown Seattle. I was surprised to see fairly robust ridership. This argues for a greater span of service on Link, not more shadow buses. ST should figure out how to do more maintenance via single tracking during the late night hours.
The time penalty of looping through Tukwila Int’l Blvd station is ridiculous. It’s like five traffic lights.
The time penalty of looping through Tukwila Int’l Blvd station is ridiculous.
My guess is they serve Tukwila International Boulevard Station (TIBS) in anticipation of the future walkway. Once that is built, the bus will make a quick stop on 405 and keep going. Otherwise it is hard to justify given that other late-night buses connect to TIBS. Both the 124 and RapidRide A connect TIBS to SeaTac while the 124 connects TIBS to downtown.
I’m surprised it’s getting robust ridership, but I’m glad!
This accentuates the need for a night owl connecting Seatac to Rainier Valley.
Pierce Transit buses, including two primary routes to downtown Tacoma, a cross-county trunk to Puyallup and several local collector/distributors serve the Lakewood Transit Center. Lakewood Station buses are “regional” like, ST’s expresses and the IT express to Lacey and Olympia.
Moving the 574 from Lakewood TC to Lakewood Station means all the riders in Steilacoom, Lakewood and JBLM will be stuck on the PT 2 and 3 milk runs to Tacoma if they want to go there or farther. Or they can walk the two circuitous miles between the two facilities. [Folks from JBLM will pass fairly close on Bridgeport, so they can get off before the TC and walk to the Station.]
If ST wants the 574 to provide the backbone of Park-N-Ride service at the Station, it should keep the terminal at the TC and visit the Station on the way to and from Tacoma. This is a serious decrease in service to the local area.
Excuse me? The Federal Way Link Extension is still “future” on the map for lines 164 and 166? Metro put out a map like that? Wow.
The “two lefts and four stoplights” routing of route 164 shows clearly why a new bus- and pedestrian/cycle bridge in the South 240th right of way is a great investment. Eventually 164/165 will become a Rapid Ride, and avoiding the mess at K-DM and PHS will be key to its reliability. See my post here (August 14, 2026 at 5:25 am) for an explanation of it.
Sorry, I guess I don’t know how to reference a previous post. It is in “Midweek Roundup: ban rental junk fees” from August 12th.