Street or Road Name - Street Type Designations

Street Type Designations

Streets can be divided into various types, each with its own general style of construction and purpose. However, the difference between streets, roads, avenues and the like is often blurred and is not a good indicator of the size, design or content of the area. For example, London's Abbey Road serves all the vital functions of a street, despite its name, and locals are more apt to refer to the "street" outside than the "road". A desolate road in rural Montana, on the other hand, may bear a sign proclaiming it "Davidson Street", but this does not make it a "street".

In the United Kingdom many towns will refer to their main thoroughfare as the High Street, and many of the ways leading off it will be named "Road" despite the urban setting. Thus the town's so-called "Roads" will actually be more streetlike than a road.

In some other English-speaking countries, such as New Zealand and Australia, cities are often divided by a main "Road", with "Streets" leading from this "Road", or are divided by thoroughfares known as "Streets" or "Roads" with no apparent differentiation between the two. In Auckland, for example, the main shopping precinct is around Queen Street and Karangahape Road, and the main urban thoroughfare connecting the south of the city to the city centre is Dominion Road.

In Manhattan, Minneapolis and Seattle, east-west streets are "Streets" whereas North-South streets are "Avenues". Yet in St. Petersburg, Florida and Memphis, Tennessee, all of the east-west streets are "Avenues" and the North-South streets are "Streets" (Memphis has one exception—the historic Beale Street runs east-west).

In Ontario, numbered concession roads are east-west whereas "lines" are North-South routes.

In Montreal, "Avenue" (used for major streets in other cities) generally indicates a small, tree-lined, low-traffic residential street. Exceptions exist, such as Park Avenue and Pine Avenue. Both are major thoroughfares in the city. In older cities, names such as "Vale" which would normally be associated with smaller roads may become attached to major thoroughfares as roads are upgraded (e.g. Roehampton Vale).

In the Netherlands in the 1970s and 1980s there was a trend to not use the street type suffix at all, resulting in street names like (translated) "North Sea" and "Tuba".

In some cities in the United States (San Francisco; Houston; Detroit; Cleveland; Rochester, New York; Memphis), streets have official suffixes, but they are not generally given on street signs or used in postal addresses. In Chicago, suffixes are given on street signs but often ignored in popular speech and in postal addresses.

Street type designations include:

• Major roads
  • Highway
    • Freeway
    • Autoroute
    • Autobahn
    • Expressway
    • Autostrasse
    • Autostrada
    • Byway
    • Auto-estrada
    • Motorway
    • Pike
  • Avenue
  • Boulevard
  • Road
  • Street
• Small roads
  • Alley
  • Bay
  • Bend
  • Drive
  • Fairway
  • Gardens
  • Gate
  • Grove
  • Heights
  • Highlands
  • Knoll
  • Lane
  • Manor
  • Mews
  • Pathway
  • Terrace
  • Trail
  • Vale
  • View
  • Walk
  • Way
• Culs-de-sac
  • Close
  • Court
  • Place
  • Cove
• Named for their shape
  • Circle
  • Crescent
  • Quadrant
  • Square
  • Loop
• Named for geographical attributes
  • Hill
  • Grade
  • Causeway
  • Canyon
  • Ridge
  • Parkway
• Named for their function
  • Esplanade
  • Approach
  • Frontage road
  • Parade
  • Park
  • Plaza
  • Promenade
  • Quay (Pronounced "key". A major street in Toronto, Canada is known as "Queens Quay". Spelled "Key" in Bellevue, Washington, USA.)
  • Bypass
  • Stravenue