The Interurban Trolley: the cross-county buses and the Yellow Line to Mishawaka, 2006 to today

2006-PRESENT · MACOG'S SYSTEM AND THE BITTERSWEET ROUTE

The system: The second transit system serving Mishawaka is not a descendant of the street railway but of the county bus experiments that followed it. Its predecessor, the system called simply BUS, grew from two parts: the independent Concord Route, established in 1986 in western Elkhart and Dunlap, and the Michiana Area Council of Governments' Elkhart-Goshen route, launched in 1999. On 20 December 2006 MACOG replaced the minibuses with wheelchair-accessible trolley-style buses and gave the system its present name, the Interurban Trolley — a name and a styling chosen in the county the electric interurbans had served, on corridors the Northern Indiana's cars had run until 1934.

The Mishawaka route: Mishawaka entered the system in September 2009, when the Bittersweet Route — the Yellow Line — was launched between Elkhart and Mishawaka's eastern neighborhoods. The route was designed from the first to sync up with Transpo's Route 9 at Twin Branch Park, the timed meeting of the cross-county bus and the city bus on the ground where the Twin Branch power plant had made Mishawaka the Power City; it also serves the Mishawaka Transfer Center downtown. The Yellow Line is one of the system's five routes, and since 2 June 2025 the two systems have shared more than a transfer point: Route 30, the one-seat South Bend-Mishawaka-Elkhart service, is jointly operated by Transpo and the Interurban Trolley. The coordination continued into the cuts: the Trolley's notice of 3 September 2026 re-routed the Yellow Line in Mishawaka expressly in collaboration with Transpo's systemwide changes, and its routes took related service changes on 1 June 2026 as well. The two systems' present Mishawaka state — the Yellow Line at Twin Branch and the transfer center, the joint Route 30 through town — is verified as of November 2026 on the operators' own published service.

Sources:

1. Wikipedia, "Interurban Trolley," compiled from MACOG's record — the predecessor BUS system from the Concord Route (1986) and the Elkhart-Goshen route (1999); the trolley-style buses and the present name from 20 December 2006; the Bittersweet/Mishawaka Route launched September 2009, designed to sync with Transpo's Route 9 at Twin Branch Park; the Yellow Line Bittersweet among the system's five routes, serving the Mishawaka Transfer Center.
2. Interurban Trolley (MACOG), service notices, 2026 — the Yellow Line re-route in Mishawaka of 3 September 2026, in collaboration with Transpo's service changes, and the modification of Route 30 in downtown Mishawaka; system service changes of 1 June 2026.