Unique Public Roadway Types

[kj3400]

Found some more in north Baltimore.

Northway, Westway, Eastway, Greenway and Kerneway, off of Cold Spring, between MD 139 (Charles St) and MD 45 (York Rd.): http://goo.gl/maps/HZMMj

[elsmere241]

There's a Speedway in Tucson, too.

It's Speedway Boulevard, though.  (My brother and sister-in-law used to live on it.)

[webfil]

Also, there are several examples in New Jersey of a street being called just "Boulevard," Madonna-style.

There's one here in Bellingham as well.  Google Maps insists on calling it Boulevard Street though.

Consider it fixed. Should be updated in the next weeks.

"Hill" is a common road type designation in the UK, and surprised it isn't used more often here. Also, there are several examples in New Jersey of a street being called just "Boulevard," Madonna-style.

There are quite a good numbers of "Hills" (côtes) in Québec City too. The city has been built on a cape : Côte Ross, Côte du Verger, Côte à Gignac or Kilmarnock's Hill, Côte de Sillery, Côte Gilmour Hill, Côte de la Montagne, Côte du Colonel-Dambourgès, Côte de la Canoterie, Côte Dinan, Côte du Palais, Côte de la Potasse, Côte d'Abraham, Côte Badelard, Côte Salaberry, Côte Sherbrooke, Côte de l'Aqueduc, Côte de la Pente-Douce, Côte Saint-Sacrement. There also were Côte Sauvageau and Côte à Coton, but they were closed in the late 1970's.

Québec City also got unique particles, such as Allée in "Grande Allée" (which means "Broadway", more than "Big Alley") and Quai Saint-André (quai means "quay").

Côte can also be literaly translated ("rib", yeah, that kind), as the rural land subdivision mimicked that body part at times. Montréal island was given côtes (ribs) instead of rangs (lines) by the clerical landlords (sulpicians, etc.). Some names still subsist today (Côte-Saint-Luc, etc.).

Montréal also has "Voie Camilien-Houde", which is unique today (the province of Québec used to have more of these). Voie translates in "Way", Camilien Houde was a mayor in the 30's.

[1995hoo]

Is montée similar to those? I'm thinking of, for example, Montée Ryan, which leads from the Trans-Canada Highway to Mont-Tremblant. My French—English dictionary says "montée" means "ascent; rise; climb." So it's not literally "Ryan Hill"–does it perhaps instead denote a road leading TO a mountain? (Joe Ryan was the man primarily responsible for construction of the original Mont-Tremblant ski resort.)

Regarding quai, I know that's used in some cities in Europe. The "Piscine" section of the Monaco Grand Prix circuit runs along Quai Albert 1er and Quai des États-Unis, for example.

[cpzilliacus]

Found some more in north Baltimore.

Northway, Westway, Eastway, Greenway and Kerneway, off of Cold Spring, between MD 139 (Charles St) and MD 45 (York Rd.): http://goo.gl/maps/HZMMj

And there's a Fallsway (adjacent to I-83) in Baltimore City.

[agentsteel53]

here I thought "côte" meant coast?  or does it mean both?

[webfil]

Is montée similar to those? I'm thinking of, for example, Montée Ryan, which leads from the Trans-Canada Highway to Mont-Tremblant. My French–English dictionary says "montée" means "ascent; rise; climb." So it's not literally "Ryan Hill"—does it perhaps instead denote a road leading TO a mountain? (Joe Ryan was the man primarily responsible for construction of the original Mont-Tremblant ski resort.)

Montée had no direct link to whatever ascent. It was, under seigneurial cadastral system, the designation for a perpendicular link between two côtes or rangs, parallel to the tenure of the lots. Since most parcels were perpendicular to the Saint-Laurent river, the back of the first row (rang) was generally "higher" than the rest, or higher along affluent streams and rivers, so that is probably why it got that climbing flavor in its designation.



The name has been kept under township cadastral system, and designates a mostly north-south road.

[webfil]

here I thought "côte" meant coast?  or does it mean both?

It means "coast", "rib" AND "hill".

[kj3400]

That's gotta get confusing, especially if all three land features happen to be in the same proximity, if that's even possible.

[Alps]

I think of Rang as a ladder "rung" and Montée as "climbing the ladder." Although it's not what the words translate to, it makes it really simple to visualize. Thinking of Côtes as ribs also helps equate them to rungs.

Now, the most common urban street names are Rue and Chemin. Chemin sorta means "path" but they both sorta mean "street" and "road" interchangeably. I tend to Anglicize along those lines.

[dgolub]

I live on a street that ends with 'Terrace', which I didn't think was terrible unusual until I tried telling people my street name and it throughly confuses them.  And I'm not sure what most people would define a Terrace as, but this one is exactly like every other street in the neighborhood that ends in 'Ave'.

I can think of a number of streets whose names end with "Terrace." I never thought it was unusual. Go figure. But on the other hand, I'm used to spelling street names that seem perfectly clear to me yet seem to confuse the heck out of people on the phone.

I concur.  There's Richmond Terrace on Staten Island, as well as a whole batch of them on Long Island and some numbered terraces in Queens.  They're not as common as streets, avenues, or roads, but they're not all that unusual.

[dgolub]

Grand Concourse in the Bronx is one that I think is not emulated elsewhere:

https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Grand+Concourse,+Bronx,+NY&hl=en&ll=40.856344,-73.899193&spn=0.018989,0.027595&sll=37.269174,-119.306607&sspn=10.222803,14.128418&oq=Grand+Concourse&hnear=Grand+Concourse,+Bronx,+New+York&t=m&z=15

The Complete Name Is
Grand Boulevard and Concourse
Some Signs use the complete name and others use Grand Concourse

There's also Merchants Concourse on Long Island, so that one is not unique, although it certainly seems uncommon.

[dgolub]

There are a number of streets ending in path in Suffolk County on Long Island.  There's Straight Path (CR 2), Hubbards Path, Old Willets Path, and Bicycle Path.  Yes, Bicycle Path is the name of a street for cars.

Also, in Upstate New York, there's the Northway and the Quickway.

A bunch of my relatives live in the Breezy Point neighborhood in Queens (site of the huge fire during Hurricane Sandy) and the majority of the streets there are named "Walk," such as "Fulton Walk" (devastated by the fire), "Suffolk Walk" (my great-grandparents had a house there), "Lincoln Walk," etc. I'm not sure these necessarily count for purposes of this thread because they're not vehicular streets–when they say "Walk," they mean the houses front on a "street" that consists of a sidewalk. You park your car in a community lot and walk to your house. They're also not technically "public" streets because the neighborhood is a co-op. But the Post Office recognizes all the addresses and the mailman has to walk down all the streets to get to the houses....anyway, outside of that neighborhood, I've never heard of an address that uses "Walk."

There's also a bunch of walks in Long Beach, New York, as well.  Similar to what you describe, they're not open to vehicular traffic, although they do get street signs.

[theline]

And as for obscure, though you place tongue in cheek, it is in fact a much less whelming experience to encounter Broadway in parts of Midtown than it used to be, before all the pedestrianizations and whatnot. It functions much as a side street now, one that people cross freely without much regard for the signals.

I've not made it to the Great White Way, though I have seen David Letterman make enough fun of the mayor's "improvements" to make me feel I've been there. After seeing many much smaller cities convert main streets in their downtown areas to complete or partial pedestrian malls in the '70s and restore traffic to them since, it's odd to see it happening now in NYC.

[1995hoo]

And as for obscure, though you place tongue in cheek, it is in fact a much less whelming experience to encounter Broadway in parts of Midtown than it used to be, before all the pedestrianizations and whatnot. It functions much as a side street now, one that people cross freely without much regard for the signals.

I've not made it to the Great White Way, though I have seen David Letterman make enough fun of the mayor's "improvements" to make me feel I've been there. After seeing many much smaller cities convert main streets in their downtown areas to complete or partial pedestrian malls in the '70s and restore traffic to them since, it's odd to see it happening now in NYC.

I suspect that one big difference in New York is that on a relative scale, given the number of people in the city, automobile travel is significantly less important there than it is in most other cities and a lot of the people heading to locations along the pedestrianized segments of Broadway will be arriving via means other than the car. Put differently, I recall all the debate about whether the Downtown Mall in Charlottesville was a dud because it hadn't become the thriving mecca they had hoped. I have no doubt that part of that is that 90% or more of the people who might head there would get there by car and park in one of the municipal garages nearby. When you have to drive to the pedestrian mall, it becomes just as easy to drive to another destination that has easier parking (and better traffic flow, in Charlottesville's case) and perhaps a roof overhead (i.e., a shopping mall). So many of the smaller cities are (like Charlottesville) not the sort of place where people do a lot of walking from one place to another. Anyone who's spent much time in New York, on the other hand, knows well the importance of walking and knows how a lot of the time in Manhattan it can be faster to walk 10 or 20 blocks than it is to take a cab or the subway.

Long way of saying, I agree with your point about it being amusing, but it's fair to recognize that New York is unique among North American cities in a lot of ways and this sort of thing might be one of them.

[Mark68]

There's Lincolnway in Cheyenne and Appleway in Spokane.

[roadman65]

In Florida you have a road named Dale Mabry Highway, but locals and FDOT refer to it simply as "Dale Mabry" and Hillsborough County, FL has the highway descriptor on street signs in relatively small lettering.

I know many folks refer to many roads in their communities by name minus descriptor, however businesses along Dale Mabry just give address number with only "Dale Mabry" in advertisements as well as legal stuff and is accepted as a legal street name in correspondence.

In Orlando we have John Young Parkway referred to as "John Young" by many via word of mouth, but in writing and correspondence it is given a full name with descriptor such as 13, 000 South John Young Parkway for a funeral home in Hunters Creek subdivision.

This is a rarity for a road to be completely name only other than Broadway and Bowery in NYC.

[empirestate]

There's Lincolnway in Cheyenne and Appleway in Spokane.

But in those sorts of cases, surely the descriptor is "Way", even though it's elided into one word. "Way" is not at all a unique type.

[deathtopumpkins]

There's Lincolnway in Cheyenne and Appleway in Spokane.

But in those sorts of cases, surely the descriptor is "Way", even though it's elided into one word. "Way" is not at all a unique type.

But the fact that it is officially combined with the name is.

[Alps]

There's Lincolnway in Cheyenne and Appleway in Spokane.

But in those sorts of cases, surely the descriptor is "Way", even though it's elided into one word. "Way" is not at all a unique type.

We did allow Fenway and Arborway. By your argument, Parkway is just Park Way.

[empirestate]

There's Lincolnway in Cheyenne and Appleway in Spokane.

But in those sorts of cases, surely the descriptor is "Way", even though it's elided into one word. "Way" is not at all a unique type.

We did allow Fenway and Arborway. By your argument, Parkway is just Park Way.

Well, the topic I believe was looking for unique instances of what are sometimes called descriptors: road, street, avenue and so on. Usually you have a proper name followed by one of these descriptors. But in cases like Fenway and Arborway, those single words are the whole name of the road. If you submit those as examples of descriptors, you could argue that the descriptor portion of the one-word name is either the "-way" portion within that name, or some other null value, but it's tough to argue that the entire name is the descriptor–after all, surely the whole idea of a descriptor is that it modifies the name, rather than itself being the name.

Now, those names are still noteworthy in their uniqueness and well worth pointing out for that, if not exactly answering the question being raised. Unless, of course, I'm misreading the spirit of the topic, which is also fine.

As for words like Parkway and Highway, those often stand alone as descriptors in their own right: King's Highway, Ocean Parkway. If the name of a road were simply "Parkway", then it would fall into the same class as Fenway. Conversely, if there were a road called "Johnson Fenway", then "Fenway" would indeed become quite a unique descriptor!

[Alps]

There's Lincolnway in Cheyenne and Appleway in Spokane.

But in those sorts of cases, surely the descriptor is "Way", even though it's elided into one word. "Way" is not at all a unique type.

We did allow Fenway and Arborway. By your argument, Parkway is just Park Way.

Well, the topic I believe was looking for unique instances of what are sometimes called descriptors: road, street, avenue and so on. Usually you have a proper name followed by one of these descriptors. But in cases like Fenway and Arborway, those single words are the whole name of the road. If you submit those as examples of descriptors, you could argue that the descriptor portion of the one-word name is either the "-way" portion within that name, or some other null value, but it's tough to argue that the entire name is the descriptor–after all, surely the whole idea of a descriptor is that it modifies the name, rather than itself being the name.

Now, those names are still noteworthy in their uniqueness and well worth pointing out for that, if not exactly answering the question being raised. Unless, of course, I'm misreading the spirit of the topic, which is also fine.

As for words like Parkway and Highway, those often stand alone as descriptors in their own right: King's Highway, Ocean Parkway. If the name of a road were simply "Parkway", then it would fall into the same class as Fenway. Conversely, if there were a road called "Johnson Fenway", then "Fenway" would indeed become quite a unique descriptor!

There are Parkways here in NJ. I believe Bloomfield has one, for example.

[CentralCAroadgeek]

Cannery Row in Monterey.

I don't know how common "Row" is used as a road suffix though...

[empirestate]

Cannery Row in Monterey.

I don't know how common "Row" is used as a road suffix though...

Relatively uncommon in the U.S., at least. Park Row is a prominent one here in NYC.

[1995hoo]

....

As for words like Parkway and Highway, those often stand alone as descriptors in their own right: King's Highway, Ocean Parkway. If the name of a road were simply "Parkway", then it would fall into the same class as Fenway. Conversely, if there were a road called "Johnson Fenway", then "Fenway" would indeed become quite a unique descriptor!

As I mentioned somewhere earlier in this thread, there's a street a few miles from where I live called "The Parkway," which is pretty close to what you suggest–I mentioned before that the map on my sat-nav, which omits street type designators, shows that street as a line with the word "The" next to it (i.e., it considers it a parkway named "The").