Route Designations
The Pulse System has a new designation for routes, modeled after Durham Regional Transit near Toronto, Canada. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durham_Region_Transit, see: routes) Presently, LeeTran route designations have no scheme or rationale -- they were created when the new routes went into effect and no scheme went into effect on how the routes were to be identified! As a result, visitors to Lee County are apt to be quite perplexed trying to find out which route takes them to their destination!
The Pulse Plan, on the other hand, identifies routes with certain areas of the County, which are designated with a single number; the corresponding routes begin with this number to identify them with the area they serve. In the map below, we see the County divided into eight zones of operation:
Each zone is represented with a single number. Double-digit numbers correspond with a "0" which indicates the downtown Fort Myers area. All the other routes are three-digit. Edison Mall routes start with the number "1." Bell Tower routes start with a "2." Cape Coral routes start with a "3." Fort Myers Beach routes start with a "4." North Fort Myers routes start with a "5." South Lee County routes start with a "6," and lastly, Lehigh Acres routes start with a "7."
Note that while there are two new routes described in the chart above -- the 25 Route and the 255 Route -- there are still the same number of routes as before. The 255 Route is simply the southern part of the former 130 Route, (but running east and west instead of north and south.) The 25 Route is the Palm Beach Express route, which could actually be run by the downtown trolley in the interest of keeping costs down... and this is an option which LeeTran could pursue if they wished. In reality, no new buses are added to the operation at all, keeping operational costs the same. The 25 Route is run by one of the buses taken from the 20 Route which needlessly ran two extra buses up and down Marsh Avenue every half hour, when the 100 Route was already running buses every half hour in both directions.