Fort Collins sits where the plains meet the foothills, with I-25 running north-south along the city's eastern edge toward Denver and Cheyenne. US 287, College Avenue, is the main north-south street, passing Old Town and the Colorado State University campus before heading toward Laramie. SR 14 runs east along Mulberry Street to I-25 and west up the Cache la Poudre canyon toward Cameron Pass. Harmony Road crosses the south side, linking I-25 with the city's largest commercial corridor.
Shields Street, Timberline Road, Lemay Avenue and Taft Hill Road carry north-south traffic, while Prospect Road, Drake Road and Horsetooth Road cross the city east-west. The city sits on a tidy mile grid, which makes nearly every neighborhood easy to reach, but College Avenue and Harmony Road back up at rush hour, and CSU football weekends flood the streets around campus. Train crossings along the Mason Street corridor and Riverside Avenue can stop traffic for several minutes at a time. For a mobile mechanic, the grid is a gift: almost any address is a few turns off an arterial, so arrival windows here tend to be reliable.
Transfort buses and the MAX bus rapid transit line run between downtown and the south side, and Fort Collins is one of the most bike-friendly cities in the state. Northern Colorado Regional Airport sits between Fort Collins and Loveland, but most air travelers drive to Denver International. Weekend trips up the Poudre and around Horsetooth Reservoir put canyon curves and steep grades on cars that spend the rest of the week on flat city streets.