Noun

Singular freeway

Plural freeways

freeway (plural freeways)

1. (Australian, Canadian, US) A road designed for safe high-speed operation of motor vehicles through the elimination of at-grade intersections, usually divided and having at least two lanes in each direction; a dual carriageway with no at-grade crossings.
2. A toll-free highway.

Related terms

• expressway
• motorway
• autoroute

A freeway is a limited access divided highway with grade separated junctions and without traffic lights or stop signs. The term is used in the United States and parts of Canada, Australia, and South Africa. A freeway is roughly equivalent to a motorway in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

In the United States, the term freeway is used in many regions. In some regions of the U.S., other terms are used, including Interstate, thruway, highway, expressway, and turnpike. While some use these terms interchangeably, turnpikes and thruways sometimes have associations with toll roads and other limited access highways, such as the New Jersey Turnpike, Ohio Turnpike, Pennsylvania Turnpike, West Virginia Turnpike, Florida's Turnpike, and New York State Thruway; consequently, the term freeway is sometimes used to refer to a toll-free road as opposed to its original meaning – in which the component "free" implies freedom from traffic interference rather than "at no cost" – still used in other countries and in parts of the U.S.

The word freeway was coined by the "Father of American Zoning," Edward M. Bassett, in an influential article published in February 1930. Bassett argued that roads should be classified into three basic types: highways, parkways, and freeways. In Bassett's zoning and property law-based system (he was a Columbia-trained lawyer), abutting property owners have the rights of light, air, and access to highways, but not parkways and freeways; the latter two are distinguished in that the purpose of a parkway is recreation, while the purpose of a freeway is movement. Thus, as originally conceived, a freeway is simply a strip of public land devoted to movement to which abutting property owners do not have rights of light, air, or access.