Expressway
From open-encyclopedia.com - the free encyclopedia.
An expressway is a divided highway, usually 4 lanes or wider in size, where direct access to adjacent properties has been eliminated. However, beyond those basic requirements, the specific meaning of expressway depends upon the state, province, or country.
Some places treat "expressway" as synonymous with "freeway," meaning that an expressway is fully grade-separated from all intersecting roads and traffic smoothly enters by merging from on-ramps, and exits only through steering onto off-ramps. Other places, like California, treat expressways as a distinct category of road separate from freeways; although intersections are minimized, they are usually at-grade (and thus much more dangerous).
See the article on freeways for more information about the subtle distinctions between freeways and expressways.
The vast majority of expressways in either sense are built by state or provincial governments, or by private companies which then operate them as toll roads pursuant to a license from the government.
The most famous exception to the above rule is Santa Clara County in California, which deliberately built its own expressway system in the 1960s to supplement the freeway system then planned by Caltrans. Although there were some plans to upgrade the county expressways into full-fledged freeways, those became politically infeasible after the rise of the tax revolt movement in the mid-1970s.
