Getting Around Wendell

The big picture

For most of its history, Wendell has been a car town. That's still mostly true — plan on a vehicle per working adult. But as of late 2025, that picture genuinely started to change. Wendell now sits on a real, all-day fixed-route bus line to Raleigh, with a dedicated downtown Park & Ride and a fare-free on-demand shuttle filling in the gaps.

None of this happened by accident. It's funded by the Wake Transit Plan, the half-cent sales-tax program voters approved in 2016 to expand bus service across the county. Wendell, Zebulon and Knightdale are among the towns that plan has finally reached.

GoTriangle ZWX express

The ZWX — Zebulon/Wendell–Raleigh Express is the headline. Run by GoTriangle, it links Zebulon and Wendell to downtown Raleigh, and it's the first time Wendell has had a bus you can actually build a routine around.

The big change came on November 9, 2025, when the ZWX went to all-day, hourly service. Before that it was a limited peak-hours-only express; now buses run throughout the day, which makes it useful for far more than just a 9-to-5 commute — appointments, errands in Raleigh, a night out, or getting to a train or another bus without owning the trip around rush hour.

Stops, in order

The route runs from Zebulon on the east end, through Wendell, into Raleigh. Here are the stops along the way:

• Zebulon Walmart East end of the line, in neighboring Zebulon.
• Zebulon Park-and-Ride Leave the car and ride in from Zebulon.
• Wendell Park & Ride 7 N Oakwood Ave — in downtown Wendell. The town's main boarding point.
• Wendell Falls at Publix At Treelight Square, the heart of the Wendell Falls community.
• Wendell Falls at Martin Pond Rd Serving the wider Wendell Falls neighborhood.
• WakeMed — New Bern Ave At WakeMed's main Raleigh campus, a major job and medical hub.
• Raleigh Union Station West end of the line — Raleigh's intermodal transit hub.

What it connects to at Union Station

Ending at Raleigh Union Station is what makes the ZWX more than a one-trick commuter bus. The station is Raleigh's central transit hub, where you can connect to:

• Amtrak — intercity rail, including service toward Charlotte, the Northeast Corridor, and beyond.
• Other GoTriangle routes — regional buses to Durham, RTP, RDU-area connections, and Cary.
• GoRaleigh — the city's local bus network, for getting around Raleigh itself once you arrive.

In practice that means from a stop in downtown Wendell you can reach a train, a Durham-bound bus, or anywhere GoRaleigh goes — all without driving into Raleigh and paying to park.

Park & Ride

If you're driving to catch the ZWX, your spot is the Wendell Park & Ride at 7 N Oakwood Avenue, right in downtown Wendell. Leave the car there, board the express, and skip the drive into Raleigh entirely — no I-440 crawl, no downtown garage fees.

This is the model that makes the bus work for a town like Wendell: you don't need to live within walking distance of a stop. Drive a few minutes to Oakwood Avenue, park, and let the bus handle the part of the trip you'd least want to drive. Riders in Zebulon have the same option at the Zebulon Park-and-Ride.

GoWake SmartRide

The ZWX is great if your trip lines up with the route. For everything else — getting to the bus stop, a cross-town errand, a ride to a neighbor town — there's GoWake SmartRide, a fare-free, on-demand rideshare service. Think of it as a publicly run, app-hailed shuttle: you request a ride within the zone and a van picks you up and drops you off where you need to go.

Where it goes

SmartRide serves Wendell, Zebulon, Knightdale and the unincorporated areas between them in eastern Wake County — exactly the kind of low-density area a traditional fixed bus route can't cover efficiently. It's also a natural feeder to the ZWX: use SmartRide to reach the Park & Ride, then take the express into Raleigh.

How to use it

• Download the app and request a ride to and from any point inside the service zone, the same way you'd hail a rideshare.
• Or call to book by phone if you'd rather not use the app.
• Pay nothing — the service is fare-free.
• Plan a little ahead — it's shared, on-demand service, so wait times vary with demand.

For the current app link, phone number, hours and exact service-area map, see GoWake's SmartRide page.

Driving

For now, driving is still how most people get around Wendell day to day. The good news is the road network is straightforward, and Wendell's position in eastern Wake County makes the east side of the Triangle very reachable. A few roads carry almost all of it:

• US-64/264 Bypass — the limited-access freeway and your main artery west into Raleigh and east toward Zebulon and the coast.
• Wendell Falls Parkway — the spine connecting the Wendell Falls community and Treelight Square to the bypass.
• Wendell Boulevard (Business US-64) — the in-town commercial corridor, lined with shops and restaurants and a handy surface-street alternative when the bypass backs up.

Biking & walking

Wendell is more walkable and bikeable than its small-town size suggests — mostly thanks to how recently a big chunk of it was built.

Wendell Falls trails

The Wendell Falls master-planned community was designed around more than 10 miles of trails woven through its parks and open space. For residents there, a lot of daily errands — the pool, the dog park, the Farmhouse community center and café, or Treelight Square with its Publix — are genuinely doable on foot or by bike without touching a car.

Downtown walkability

Historic downtown Wendell is compact and walkable, with shops, restaurants and Wendell Park clustered close together. It's the kind of small downtown where parking once and walking the rest makes sense — and the ZWX Park & Ride sits right in it.

Greenway plans

The town has greenway plans on the books to better connect neighborhoods, parks and downtown over time. Today's trail network is mostly within Wendell Falls; the long-term vision is a more connected, town-wide system. (Note: the Mingo Creek Greenway is in Knightdale, not Wendell.)

The honest take

Let's be straight: Wendell's transit is new and limited compared to a big-city network. One express bus line, one fare-free shuttle zone, and a trail system that's mostly inside one neighborhood do not add up to a car-free lifestyle for most people. If you're moving here, plan to drive.

But the direction matters as much as the current state. A few years ago Wendell had essentially no all-day fixed-route transit. Now it has an hourly bus to downtown Raleigh that connects to Amtrak and the regional bus network, a dedicated Park & Ride, and a fare-free on-demand service covering the gaps — all funded by a long-term plan voters approved in 2016. It's real, it's growing, and it's worth knowing how to use, whether you ride it every day or just when it beats driving into Raleigh.