Roads with unfitting road name suffixes

[formulanone]

Buffalo Speedway and Mukilteo Speedway are open to the public, but there's speed limits and traffic laws. At least they're open 24 hours a day without entry fees.

[GaryA]

Los Angeles has Whitnall Highway, which was proposed way back in the 1920's as a sort of proto-freeway crossing the San Fernando Valley.  Only a couple of short sections were built, each just a few blocks long, but they still carry that optimistic name.  You can trace power lines following what may have been the planned route, but it's not clear how well or how far that match goes.

(Not the same as the also proposed but never built CA 64 Whitnall Freeway, which was decades later.)

[Molandfreak]

A "court" that is a thru-street with connections to two other roads.

[Bruce]

Buffalo Speedway and Mukilteo Speedway are open to the public, but there's speed limits and traffic laws. At least they're open 24 hours a day without entry fees.

Mukilteo Speedway is anything but speedy, as well. Probably should be replaced the Signalway for the number of traffic lights it now has.

[US 89]

In the little town of Dinosaur, Colorado, we have the Stegosaurus Freeway in all its glory. It's one of the only named streets in town that isn't alliterative, either. US 40 runs along Brontosaurus Boulevard, and the cross streets include things like Triceratops Terrace, Antrodemus Alley, Plateosaurus Place, Ceratosaurus Circle, Camptosaurus Crescent, Diplodicus Drive. Surely Stegosaurus Street was an option?

Kellogg Drive is the unassuming name for the US 54/400 freeway in Wichita.

A lot of the standard suffixes have indeed lost their original meanings, some of them more than others - and I would argue "Parkway" now fits that bill as it has been applied to roads of just about every category, from regular freeways to suburban arterials to little streets through random subdivisions. To me, that feels less weird than driving on a big "Lane" or a small "Boulevard".

[kphoger]

Kellogg Drive is the unassuming name for the US 54/400 freeway in Wichita.

Close, but not quite.  Kellogg Avenue is the name of the highway itself.  Kellogg Drive is the name of the frontage roads.

Of course, 'Avenue' isn't much more fitting than 'Drive'.  But it's a route that has had interchanges added piecemeal over the last few decades, so I'm not sure it's entirely inappropriate.  When my wife and I first moved here 15 years ago, after all, the freeway didn't extend any farther east than Woodlawn.

[SD Mapman]

The section line roads in Brandon, SD are two-lane "boulevards" named after trees (or the two waterways that border the town). Personally, I think they should rebuild the roads into divided 4-lane boulevards with the tree the road is named after in the middle, it'd be interesting to see if redwoods could grow in eastern SD lol.

[pderocco]

There's a number of more or less run-of-the-mill road name suffixes that no longer mean what they originally did.

An avenue, for example, was an approach road to a specific place, usually a country house.

A boulevard, at least in road usage, was a road paralleling a defensive city wall.

A court was originally a closed-off area, like a courtyard, and so on and so on.

A terrace was (and still is) a flat area carved out of a slope.

[pderocco]

A "motorway" sounds like something a "motorist" would drive on, but where I live in SoCal, it's usually a terrible, rutted dirt road in the mountains, only expected to be travelled by very large fire-fighting equipment.

These are also frequently called "truck trails". But there is one Skyline Truck Trail that is actually a nice, fairly straight road through the hills of San Diego County, that doesn't even look like it replaced a fire road of that name.

[bcroadguy]

North Grandview Highway in Vancouver is a traffic calmed bike route.

The Disraeli Freeway in Winnipeg (a city with no freeways) is not a freeway.

Many freeways in Calgary have the suffix "Trail."

[Ted$8roadFan]

In Portland, CT (and perhaps others), some streets are signed as extensions, i.e. Coe Avenue Ext. Not sure why they couldn't add a directional or other suffix. 

[-- US 175 --]

The freeway in Amarillo that carries I-27, US 60, and US 87 south from near downtown and I-40 is actually named Canyon Drive.  Apparently no move has ever been made by the city to update/upgrade the name.  Many locals refer to it as "the E-way" as if were going by an "expressway" naming.

Meanwhile, the north-of-downtown counterpart for US 87 and US 287 is "Dumas Drive".  As with Canyon Drive, nothing has been done by the city to update this freeway name, either.

It will be interesting to see if any of the upgraded-to-freeway portions that come along on Loop 335 ever have their namings updated/upgraded to match.  Probably not a reason to hold my breath.

[roadman65]

Burlington Street in Hamilton, ON is a freeway.  It's actually a spur to the QEW and resembles a three digit interstate to its parent.


Even to call QEW a way is odd, as it's all freeway.

[LilianaUwU]

Boulevard Gastonguay, Boulevard Savard, Boulevard Cloutier, all are "boulevards" that are no more larger than residential streets in Québec City.

[wriddle082]

Many of the freeways in Greensboro, NC have Boulevard names.  Fordham Blvd. for I-40 west of town.  O'Henry Blvd for US 29 east and northeast of town.  I can't recall the name that Business I-85 has, along with its duplex with I-40 through "Death Valley" , but it has one.  And there's also the unnumbered Bryan Blvd. freeway on the northwest side of town.

[1995hoo]

Many of the freeways in Greensboro, NC have Boulevard names.  Fordham Blvd. for I-40 west of town.  O'Henry Blvd for US 29 east and northeast of town.  I can't recall the name that Business I-85 has, along with its duplex with I-40 through "Death Valley" , but it has one.  And there's also the unnumbered Bryan Blvd. freeway on the northwest side of town.

It's interesting, a portion of US-15/501 near Chapel Hill also bears the name "Fordham Boulevard." I wonder what the connection is that prompted the use of that name in North Carolina. When I hear "Fordham," I think of the university in the Bronx because my father got his undergraduate degree there and my mother got her master's degree there.

[Dirt Roads]

Many of the freeways in Greensboro, NC have Boulevard names.  Fordham Blvd. for I-40 west of town.  O'Henry Blvd for US 29 east and northeast of town.  I can't recall the name that Business I-85 has, along with its duplex with I-40 through "Death Valley" , but it has one.  And there's also the unnumbered Bryan Blvd. freeway on the northwest side of town.

It's interesting, a portion of US-15/501 near Chapel Hill also bears the name "Fordham Boulevard." I wonder what the connection is that prompted the use of that name in North Carolina. When I hear "Fordham," I think of the university in the Bronx because my father got his undergraduate degree there and my mother got her master's degree there.

There is a connection, indeed.  Fordham Boulevard in Greensboro is named after C. C. Fordham, Sr., founder of the famed Fordham Drug Store on South Elm Street that finally closed in 2002.  Fordham Boulevard in Chapel Hill is named after his grandson, Christopher C. Fordham III, who served as Dean of the UNC School of Medicine in the 1970s, and Chancellor of the University from 1980 to 1988.  Left out in the middle was Christopher Columbus Fordham, Jr., who played on the 1922 UNC football team that won the National Championship.  The junior ended up inheriting his father's drug store in 1938 and was probably more prestigious than either of the other two.  Yet he died from a heart attack while making a home delivery in 1969.

[Henry]

I can't recall the name that Business I-85 has, along with its duplex with I-40 through "Death Valley" , but it has one.

That would be Preddy Blvd.

Also, Painter Blvd was the planning name for what is now the Urban Loop.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

Cedar Avenue, a full modern freeway carrying the MN 77 designation, and fully signed as such between Old Shakopee Road and its southern terminus.

Isn't part of US 6 in Denver signed as the 6th Ave freeway?

[SSR_317]

Siegen Lane, Essen Lane, Staring Lane, O'Neal Lane in Baton Rouge. All of these are now 4-6 lane major arterials.

Not as bad as the Reno area (and other parts of Nevada) where almost every street, regardless of functional classification or traffic count, is suffixed with "Lane".

[Halian]

The "city"  (read: bedroom community that won't even stand up its own cop shop) where I live has several streets named Boulevard that are neither scenic nor tree-lined, instead being side roads for more houses.

[jay8g]

Most of the paths around the UW campus have street-like suffixes, though it seems the UW stopped maintaining the signs a while back and most have gone missing.

Right nearby, Campus Parkway isn't what most people would think of as a parkway. Neither are several other "Parkways" in the region.

W Queen Anne Driveway is a normal residential street, not anything like a normal driveway. 

[zachary_amaryllis]

I give you Hiawatha Highway, Red Feather Lakes, CO.

https://goo.gl/maps/M6YeB2ctN3orNDRF7

[Henry]

I-44 in Tulsa is known as Skelly Drive.

Would names like the Vine Street Expressway (I-676 in Philly) count? I think so, even if it adds the correct designator to the one that's obviously wrong.

[zachary_amaryllis]

Where's the Colorado Springs guy?

I want to say they have streets like Milton E Proby Parkway, Hancock Expressway, and a few others that, unless I'm mistaken, are more or less regular streets.