Rockaway Freeway question

[bugo]

Is this road just a normal 2 lane street that runs underneath the rail line?  If so, why is it called a "freeway?"

[NE2]

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22rockaway+freeway%22&tbs=sbd%3A1%2Ccdr%3A1%2Ccd_min%3A1900%2Ccd_max%3A1950&tbm=nws
Perhaps because it was "free" of railroad grade crossings? I don't know if the term freeway was in wide use back in 1941 (the Pasadena Freeway had just opened in 1940).

[Alps]

Keep in mind NYC used Expressway for what we call freeways, and Parkway for limited-access car-only roads (regardless of grade separation).

[vdeane]

Not just NYC... true for the entire state as far as I can tell, though NYSDOT has switched over to freeway.

[HighwayMaster]

Also, when the 110 originally opened, it was the Arroyo Seco Parkway.

[roadman65]

In New Smyrna Beach, FL there is US 1 being called the Dixie Freeway.  This is not at all freeway standards, but an arterial. 

[1995hoo]

Is this road just a normal 2 lane street that runs underneath the rail line?  If so, why is it called a "freeway?"

I seem to recall when I was a kid it had four lanes, two on each side. My father's mother moved out to Far Rockaway in the early 1980s from Bay Ridge (where my mother's parents lived) and we used Rockaway Freeway a couple of times going to visit before my father decided it was too dangerous and swore to use Beach Channel Drive instead. People drove way too fast on there and made a lot of turns where they weren't supposed to and there were a lot of crashes. Once upon a time there were a few traffic lights that had no yellow cycle–they went directly from green to red. I do not remember what the speed limit used to be.

Prior to the city trying to make the road safer in the late 1990s, there were a lot of very serious accidents on that road due to people going insanely fast.

None of that explains why it was called a "freeway," though. It's fair to say it was "limited access" in that there were a reduced number of places where you could legally turn onto or off of it, at least insofar as you wanted to go left (probably a good thing with the support columns for the A train), but it's never been a "freeway" in the sense that most people use that term. I suspect Steve is probably on the right track. For what it's worth, here in the DC area I don't know very many people who say either "expressway" or "freeway"–they refer to those sorts of roads as "highways." Except when talking to people on this forum, I generally think of "freeway" as being more of a California term because most of the people I know who use that word come from that state.