Transportation
Today, Colorado Springs has many features of a modern urban area, such as parks, bike trails, and urban open-area spaces. However, it is not exempt from problems that typically plague cities that experience tremendous growth like overcrowded roads and highways, crime, sprawl, and government budget issues. Many of the problems are indirectly or directly caused by the city's difficulty in coping with the large population growth experienced in the last 20 years and the annexing of the Banning Lewis Ranch area for 175,000 future residents.
Colorado Springs is served by a bus system called Mountain Metro (short for Mountain Metropolitan Transit). Mountain Metro also operates the Front Range Express (FREX) service, which connects Colorado Springs to Denver and several other metropolitan areas during weekdays. Although the transit system serves much of the city and its nearest suburbs, it lacks service to many important areas and has only limited hours of operation.
Colorado Springs is served by the Colorado Springs Municipal Airport. In the state of Colorado, only Denver International has more passenger traffic. The airport has experienced a higher recovery rate in the post-9/11 era than the rest of the country and is in the process of expanding its maintenance facilities, taxiways, and runways to accommodate future growth. In 2005 it served approximately two million passengers.
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