August 2026 schedule changes

John Wilson

Hear ye! Hear ye! Metro Transit’s quarterly route and schedule changes are coming up.

The next pick goes into effect on Saturday, Aug. 22, 2026. Picks always go into effect on a Saturday, so there are two days of the new service pattern prior to the first weekday rush hour.

Bus routes that go to the 46th Street light rail station are going to be scheduled to arrive five minutes later and leave five minutes earlier because of construction delays in the area. These include the A Line and Routes 7, 9, and 74.

On school days, Metro Transit will add extra buses to specific routes. They do this every year to accommodate student commuters. School-day only buses will run on Routes 5, 14, 22, and 48.
Route 14 will run more often, every 15 minutes instead of every 20, on weekday afternoons.
A new bus route, numbered 48, will replace parts of the present 14 on the North Side and in Golden Valley and Crystal. This bus will go out Glenwood Ave. to Penn, to Golden Valley Road, to Douglas Dr. It will run once an hour seven days a week. If you’re interested in positive thinking, please consider taking the 48 to the Unity Church in Golden Valley. Their Sunday service is at 10 a.m. (I am not being paid or encouraged to say this by the church. It is just a place I used to go for the positive energy.)

Bus service on the East Side of Saint Paul is getting a makeover: the tangled weave of branches on Route 74 through the Tangletown neighborhood (Yes, Saint Paul has one too!) is being trimmed back to one unified route, while the area abandoned by the minor branches will be close to new Route 215, a crosstown route that will serve McKnight Road through Saint Paul, Maplewood, and North Saint Paul, between Sun Ray Shopping Center and Maplewood Mall. This route will run once an hour, seven days a week.

The best improvement isn’t coming right away but is being practiced for as you read this: the Southwest Light Rail Transit, also known as the Green Line Extension. While Metro Transit hasn’t announced an official opening date, transit fans speculate it will be in the spring or summer of 2027.

There is a current debate whether the independent suburban bus systems should continue or merge with Metro Transit. This may affect relations between Southwest Transit and the Green Line Extension when it opens. My opinion is that Southwest Transit should cut back on commuter expresses to downtown Minneapolis and the University of Minnesota and focus more on local buses within their area. There is a particular need for access to the Eden Prairie Center and surrounding retail stores from Southwest Station, and a scheduled bus is preferable to microtransit.