Big changes are coming to South Snohomish County’s transit routes, Community Transit CEO Ric Ilgenfritz told the Mountlake Terrace City Council at its Monday, June 5 meeting.

The meeting centered around a Community Transit update, during which Ilgenfritz told councilmembers that with light rail coming to Mountlake Terrace and Lynnwood in 2024, many bus lines are being revised to better serve local commuters.

“This is a really interesting place to talk about the future of transit,” he said. “You literally have a front-row seat for what happens out there.”

Ilgenfritz said that Community Transit will be eliminating commuter routes to Seattle so that the agency can focus on bringing improved service to Snohomish County.

“So what’s about to happen is, we’re going to pull all of our service out of downtown Seattle and out of the University District and away from Northgate,” he said. “That’s about 30% of our service. Beginning next fall, we’re going to redeploy all that service and add some to achieve that more frequent, more reliable, higher-quality network within Snohomish County.”

In the next few years, the agency will transition from 46 bus routes to 35, with those remaining routes running more frequently and later into the evening. In Mountlake Terrace, five local bus routes are either being revised or their operating hours are being extended. Chris Simmons, Community Transit’s manager of planning, updated the council on what lines would be affected.

Route 102 will be revised so it runs from Edmonds Station next to the Edmonds-Kingston ferry terminal to the Edmonds Park and Ride, then travels through Mountlake Terrace, ending up at the Lynnwood Transit Center. Route 112’s destinations will remain the same; however, its service frequency will be increased from 60-minute to 20-minute intervals on weekdays and 30 minutes on weekends. It will run from 6 a.m.-6 p.m. seven days a week at these intervals. Route 119 will remain the same, but its service intervals will increase from 60 minutes to 30 minutes as well. Route 130 – which runs through both Edmonds and Mountlake Terrace and ends in Lynnwood – will be slightly altered. Instead of running down 5th Avenue South in Edmonds, it will now travel along 100th Avenue West. It will also have its service intervals cut in half to 30 minutes and will run later into the evening.

There is also a new route – Route 909 – to serve ferry commuters, which is in the testing stage, Simmons said.

“We have heard for years that people are trying to make a much cleaner connection between the Edmonds-Kingston ferry to our commuter buses,” he said. “And while our commuter buses are going away, the need to connect to downtown Seattle from that ferry is not.”

Simmons said that Route 909 will start on a 50-minute service interval, which might seem weird to many, but it is intended to line up with ferry departure and arrival schedules rather than bus schedules.

“This route is a test,” he said. “We do not know how this is going to be responded to. We think favorably given community comments that we have received. But we don’t know.”

Simmons said that Community Transit will continue to monitor Route 909’s success and will make adjustments when necessary to ensure ease of travel for all passengers.

The planning manager told councilmembers that the Community Transit board has already approved these changes and staff are planning a phased implementation process to guarantee a smooth transition. These new routes will not be completely implemented until September 2026, which will give staff time to make changes if needed.

In addition, the council Monday night issued two proclamations, one declaring June as Pride Month in Mountlake Terrace and the other proclaiming June 19 as Juneteenth, commemorating the emancipation of enslaved people in the U.S.

–By Lauren Reichenbach