Woodland Park info. (Colorado Springs: lease, home, living)

[weston150]

I will be relocating to the Colorado Springs area in April. The town I am most interested in is Woodland Park, but I would like some advice/info. before I sign a lease. I am interested in what the average commute is like from WP to downtown COS? How bad is this commute during the Winter months? I have heard many people commute from this area to the city, so I assume it is a decent commute (I am used to sitting in traffic everyday for 2 hours round-trip!!)

Also, I was just wondering what the Winter is like in Woodland Park. I understand it is quite cold in the Winter, but I have not had much luck so far in finding information on average snowfall, etc....Any advice would be greatly appreciated

[toxicavenger]

do a search and you will find some good info.

[reginhild]

You will be at 8000-9000 ft altitude in Woodland park compared to 6000-7500 ft in the Colorado Springs area (more snow, less oxygen, more ultraviolet). You have basically one main road, I-24, to get between Woodland Park and Colorado Springs. A secondary road is Rampart Range road (dirt and over twice the distance). Sometimes I-24 closes in the Winter, other times it is only open to people going to their residence that have 4WD/AWD and chains. In good weather and traffic it can be a decent 30 minute commute to downtown. For small town mountain living, Woodland Park is great.

[wilson49332]

The road is a 4 lane road, and usually is plowed quickly, but can be slow due to the ice and snow. I would say it would be around 20-30 minutes on a good day, 30-50 minutes on a slow or bad weather day unless its real bad then most people just take the day off. As to the weather- take 10 degrees off the numbers you find for colorado springs. Its 3000 feet higher than the springs itself, so thats to be expected. Its a great town if you can afford it!

[otowi]

I have a friend who lives up in Woodland Park. The commute from my home or place of work up there is about 45 minutes each way. But most of the time it is trouble-free. If you are prone to car-sickness, the windy roads up or down Ute Pass may make you ill. When we get an inch or two of snow in the Springs, they sometimes have a foot of snow up there. But in other instances, we'll have 6 inches of snow or pouring rain down here, and they'll be above the weather up there.

[Bub]

Also, there is mass transit now from downtown Colorado Springs to Woodland Park:
City of Colorado Springs - Transit Homepage (http://www.springsgov.com/SectionIndex.asp?SectionID=19 - broken link)

Personally I think life is better up this way, and quite often we will be sunny while Colorado Springs is cloudy.