Transportation Freeways and expressways The Phoenix Metropolitan Area is served by several controlled-access freeways, including: • • • • • • • • New freeways are planned in the future, either through upgrades of existing roads such as
SR 74,
SR 85, and
Northern Parkway; or through the construction of new freeways where no road existed before such as
SR 24 and
SR 30.
Arterial roads Most of the arterial roads in the Phoenix metropolitan area are laid out on a regular
grid, following the
section lines established in the
Public Land Survey System. As a result, arterial roads in cities that had once been geographically separate may have been given different names while occupying the same section line. When these roads were extended to accommodate the growth in the area they eventually merged into a single road while the previous segments retained their existing names. This results in several cases of a road abruptly changing names; for example, Dunlap Avenue in Phoenix becomes Olive Avenue west of 43rd Avenue, in Glendale. Another quirk of a grid system based upon the Public Land Survey System is due to the occasional corrections in the grid caused by the
curvature of the Earth. This results in arterial roadways deviating slightly from a straight line, as can be seen in many locations where roads abruptly curve either just north or just south of Baseline Road to follow a new section line. The majority of the cities in the metropolitan area, as well as unincorporated areas in Maricopa County, observe the
addressing system employed by the city of Phoenix. A number of cities, however, retain their own addressing systems with differing reference points, creating the potential for multiple instances of a house number being found on the same named road. In terms of numbering systems, some roads that continue through multiple cities will switch numbering conventions several times. Broadway Road, for example, starts and stops multiple times, passing through Goodyear, Avondale, Phoenix, Tempe, Mesa, and Apache Junction, each with their own reference point for address numbering. Though the street does not curve, the direction changes from west to east in each city and back again when moving from one city to the next, causing considerable overlap in numbers.
Street numbering systems Most communities in Maricopa County use the Phoenix-County numbering system, with the point of origin at Central Avenue and Washington Street. In the Phoenix-County system, north-south numbered roads labeled "avenue", "drive", and "lane" are West of Central Avenue, while those labeled "street", "place" and "way" are east of Central Avenue. Starting with 579th Avenue in the west near Tonopah the avenues count down with approximately 8 numbers per mile to 19th Avenue and count up again to from 16th Street to 228th Street near Queen Creek in the east. They go, in order from west to east (although not all necessarily exist): • 2nd Avenue – 1st Dale – 1st Glen – 1st Lane – 1st Drive – 1st Avenue • Central Avenue • 1st Street – 1st Place – 1st Way – 1st Terrace – 1st Run – 2nd Street This has been a source of confusion for a few newcomers, who might end up, for example, at 91st
Avenue and Thunderbird Road, when in fact they intended to go to 91st
Street and Thunderbird Road, between 30 minutes and an hour away from one another depending on traffic. One beneficial quality of this arrangement for unfamiliar travelers is that the major north-south
arterial roads are rarely similarly named; the "avenue" arterials in the West Valley are all odd-numbered and the "street" arterials in the East Valley are even-numbered, with the exception of 7th Ave. & 7th St., both being major roadways running parallel and each one-half mile from Central Ave. Communities in Maricopa County that have their own street numbering systems include: Additional confusion can be encountered in Mesa in its urban core, with east-west numbered avenues and drives counting down from 11th Avenue north towards Main Street), and numbered streets and places counting down from 11th Place south towards Main Street. Then, in the eastern part of the city, north-south streets and places count up from 22nd St east of Gilbert Rd, to 112th Street on the Apache Junction border. Numerous trailer parks inside the city limits run their own contradictory variations of the numbered street system. Most communities in Pinal County use the Pinal County street numbering system, whose point of origin is at
SR 287 and 11 Mile Corner Road (the intersection of which is known as "11 Mile Corner"). Exceptions include: Apache Junction continues Mesa's convention of numbered north-south street names by having the sequence continue east from 112th St while simultaneously having east-west numbered avenues south of Apache Trail and east-west numbered streets north of Apache Trail.
Traffic safety In terms of safety, the Phoenix–Mesa–Chandler, AZ metropolitan area has been ranked 16th most dangerous in the USA, based on its Pedestrian Danger Index, computed on the share of local commuters who walk to work and the most recent data on pedestrian deaths as found in a 2016 report released by
Smart Growth America.
Rail Amtrak serves the Phoenix metropolitan area with their
Sunset Limited and
Texas Eagle trains—both of which stop in
Maricopa, located about 40 miles south of downtown Phoenix. Amtrak's
Stagecoach Express provides
Amtrak Thruway service from
Maricopa station to both
Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport and
Tempe station. Amtrak also provides additional Thruway Motorcoach service from Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport to
Flagstaff station, which is served by the
Southwest Chief. Amtrak's Los Angeles-New Orleans
Sunset Limited served the city of Phoenix directly from 1971 until it was rerouted on June 2, 1996, to a more southerly route between
Tucson and
Yuma, Arizona, in order to accommodate the
Union Pacific Railroad's desire to abandon a portion of its Phoenix-to-Yuma "West Line." This made Phoenix one of the largest cities in the nation without direct passenger service. A
light rail system (dubbed the "METRO Light Rail") runs more than 20 miles from suburban Mesa, through Tempe and into Phoenix, traveling through the downtown area, offering access to Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport and linking two of the four metro area campuses of
Arizona State University. The light rail began public operation on December 27, 2008, and it was projected to accommodate 26,000 boardings a day, or more than 8 million boardings in its first year. Valley Metro Rail boardings has experienced constant growth since the beginning. In the year 2012, the light rail boarded just over 14 million people. Many expansions to the METRO system are currently in the early planning stages, and others are under construction. The Central Mesa extension project, which extends the Main Street line miles from Sycamore to Mesa Drive in Downtown Mesa, finished construction and opened on August 22, 2015. The Northwest rail project opened March 2016. The project extended the 19th Avenue track from its former terminus at Montebello Ave to Dunlap Avenue, 3 miles north. Another Mesa extension added 2 miles of rail and opened in May 2019, with service reaching Gilbert Road and Main Street. In January 2024, the northern end was extended further, to the Metro Parkway stop at the former Metrocenter shopping mall. In June 2025, the biggest change to the Light Rail system was opened, the South Central Extension. The extension added nearly 5 miles going south of Central Phoenix along Central Avenue, to Baseline Road. This extension made the Light Rail into a two-line system, with A line going from Central Phoenix to Downtown Mesa, and the B line from Metro Parkway to Baseline and Central. More extensions are funded, with further projects being studied for feasibility.
Aviation In 2023,
Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport was the 33rd busiest passenger facility in the world and the 14th busiest in the United States, with more than 48 million total passengers. With two active terminal buildings encompassing 117 gates, more than 25 airlines offer daily non-stop flights to destinations throughout the world.
Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport began commercial passenger flights in 2004. The airport provides service to over 40 destinations. There are several municipal and regional airports in the metropolitan area that are not used by commercial airlines for passenger flights. They include, but are not limited to,
Glendale Airport,
Phoenix Deer Valley Airport,
Phoenix Goodyear Airport,
Scottsdale Airport,
Falcon Field,
Chandler Municipal Airport,
Buckeye Airport,
Phoenix Regional Airport,
Pleasant Valley Airport,
Estrella Sailport,
Stellar Airpark, Skyranch at Carefree,
Gila River Memorial Airport,
Pegasus Airpark. ==See also==