Bellevue commuters who ride the Route 550 express bus across Lake Washington will need to find a new seat starting Saturday, Aug. 29. That's when Sound Transit permanently retires the cross-lake bus. The Bellevue-to-Seattle corridor passes entirely to the 2 Line light rail.
The change caps a transition that began March 28, when the 2 Line's Crosslake Connection opened between South Bellevue Station and International District/Chinatown Station. Route 550 ridership dropped roughly 2,000 average weekday boardings between April 2025 and April 2026 as riders shifted to rail, according to Seattle Transit Blog ridership data published in June.
What riders get instead
The 2 Line runs from Bellevue Downtown Station to Westlake Station in roughly 25–28 minutes, or to International District/Chinatown in about 19 minutes. Trains arrive every 8–10 minutes during peak hours, every 12–15 minutes off-peak and every 15 minutes on weekends, with service from approximately 5 a.m. to 1 a.m. daily, according to Downtown Bellevue Network's rider guide.
An adult fare is $3.25 per trip with an ORCA card. South Bellevue Station offers the largest park-and-ride on the Eastside, free for ORCA holders who tap in.
For riders who relied on Route 550's stops along Bellevue Way, Route 556 will be updated to provide all-day service between Issaquah and Bellevue starting Aug. 29, running every 15 minutes during the day.
New routes reshape the Eastside bus map
Route 550 isn't the only familiar number disappearing. As we reported Aug. 19, Route 271 also ends Aug. 29, replaced by two new lines:
- Route 270 connects downtown Bellevue to the University District via Bellevue Way and SR-520, running every 15 minutes on weekdays and every 30 minutes on weekends.
- Route 220 connects Eastgate to downtown Bellevue via Bellevue College, Lake Hills and East Main Station on the same schedule.
A new night-owl Route 547 will also launch, running every 30 minutes between Seattle and Redmond from midnight to 4:30 a.m., stopping near every 2 Line station except East Main.
The Aug. 29 overhaul is part of what King County Metro called its largest service expansion in recent years: nine new routes and more than 3,000 additional weekly bus trips system-wide.
"This marks the single largest bus service investment in South King County in a generation," King County Executive Girmay Zahilay said in an Aug. 3 announcement about the broader Metro expansion. Zahilay also serves on the Sound Transit Board.
What to know before Aug. 29
Riders should note that the Bellevue Transit Center's eastern half remains closed for Stride S1 and S2 bus rapid transit construction through February 2027.
Bus stops have been temporarily relocated to NE 6th Street east of 110th Avenue NE and 110th Avenue NE south of NE 6th Street, according to the city's traffic advisory page.
Sound Transit is hosting virtual information sessions on Tuesday, Aug. 25, and Wednesday, Aug. 26. Updated schedules and maps are available in English, Simplified Chinese, Russian, Spanish and Vietnamese at kingcounty.gov and soundtransit.org.
