FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:    Steve Myers or Jeff Shuler, Lee Tran,
                (941) 277-5012

FORT MYERS, Fla. (August 24, 2001) – The Board of Lee County Commissioners will hold a groundbreaking Tuesday (Aug. 28) for a new bus transfer center in Cape Coral.

The ceremony will be at 1 p.m. at 820 S.E. 47^th Terrace, north of Cape Coral Parkway between Del Prado and Coronado boulevards.

The Lee Tran Cape Coral Transfer Center will cost $913,000 and provide a central location downtown for riders to easily board and transfer buses. The current downtown transfer point on Leonard Street has only one small shelter and the buses currently wait on the street.

The new facility will have dedicated bays for each of the four routes servicing the Transfer Center and buses will be able to pull off the street, improving traffic flow and pedestrian safety. It also will have 57 parking spaces. The center will complement coming improvements in bus service, including half-hour service between downtown Cape Coral and Edison Mall via Route 120.

By riding Lee Tran between the two cities, residents can easily avoid both tolls and wear and tear on their vehicles – saving money and decreasing traffic congestion along one of the county’s main east-west corridors. The center is being designed with the future in mind. One of the bays will be large enough for an inter-city bus to use, in the event that Greyhound or another bus company decides to make a Cape Coral stop.

This is the second such intermodal transfer center to be built in the last year. In November, the 21,000-square-foot Lee County Intermodal Transfer Center opened in downtown Fort Myers offering similar services as well as ticket counters for Lee Tran and Greyhound.

The new Lee Tran Cape Coral Transfer Center is made possible through the cooperation of a number of government agencies, including the United States Federal Transit Administration (FTA), Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT), Lee County government, the City of Cape Coral and the Cape Coral Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA). The project if being funded through a $511,000 FTA grant, a $370,000 FDOT grant, and $32,000 from the Cape Coral CRA. The City of Cape Coral has generously allowed Lee County to use the land where the transfer center is being built.

Lee Tran operates 20 bus routes in Lee County and its cities, as well as a trolley service on Fort Myers Beach. The system has 43 buses and an annual budget of $14 million.