You see those on signs all the time. Is there, or was there, any technical distinction between them? Or do the powers that be just name them whatever they feel like?
In recent practice, these and other terms have been applied with little concern. But traditionally they all have different connotations. For example a road traverses countryside, often windingly, while a street angles through the city. A lane is a smaller street, while a boulevard is much larger, often divided with medians and rows of trees. An avenue was originally a kind of tree-lined lane, but later became something kind of intermediate between a street and a boulevard.
Some municipalities have general guidelines for this sort of thing. Here is an interesting-ish pdf about street names in Chicago.
“Avenue - Title applied mostly to streets running North and South. There are exceptions.
Blvd - Title given to streets where trucks over 5 tons are not permitted.
Court - Title given to short roadway.
Parkway - Title given to street that ends at a park.
Place - Title given to street running the 1/2 block between streets.
Street - Title applied mostly to streets running East and West. There are exceptions”
Interestingish. Good word for use in this forum.
In a suburb of Rochester, you will find a street named Boulevard Parkway. It is a two block long dead end. W. Boulevard Parkway runs perpendicularly into the middle of it and the two are connected diagonally by Boulevard Parkway Ramp.
Boulevards were the name given to the wide avenues that Hausmann carved into the older, narrow street grid of Paris. In America, Boulevards were part of the City Beautiful movement, which tried to create similar grand avenues that would bypass the tangle of pre-colonial streets.
Parkways came a bit later in response to automobiles. They were limited access roadways designed to allow mototists to move from one part of the city to another without having to stop for a light at every corner. They usually had rows of trees planted along the sides instead of shops and houses.
Avenues, roads, and streets were used fairly interchangeably, although local rules, like those in NYC, might make a difference.
None of that makes much difference anymore. Suburban developers can name the streets anything they want, and they often get creative or grandiose as above. It was one of the few fun things when I delivered mail to come across a new weird name. Wikipedia has a very partial list.
Kind of off topic, but how many of them can you name?
It’s common for a city to use different names for the north-south streets and the east-west ones, but it’s not consistent between cities which is which. For instance, in Cleveland, streets are numbered, and run north-south, while avenues have names, and run east-west. In Bozeman, MT, by contrast, avenues are numbered and run north-south, while streets run east-west. Cleveland also has a handful of boulevards (East Boulevard, West Boulevard, Ontario Boulevard), which mostly run north-south and are mostly upscale neighborhoods, a couple of roads (such as Ridge Road, which runs north-south), and at least one drive (Martin Luther King Drive, which mostly parallels East Boulevard).
In Old York we use the old word or suffix *-gate *to describe a street or lane in the town centre; as in Newgate, Davygate, Gooramgate, Gillygate, Micklegate and so on; it derives from old Norse gata and dates back to the time of the Danelaw.
We have gates in the city walls, too, but they are called ‘bars’ instead.
Oh, and the bars are called pubs.
Yeah, that’s not very accurate. At least on the north side, it looks like the majority of east-west roads are also names Avenue.
Just as another data point, Edmonton’s streets are north-south and avenues are east-west (assuming in both cases you are not in an area where they are twisty-turny).
In the computer world, we’d call that a Best Practice. Which means it’s the ideal you SHOULD do, but that nobody ever follows completely.
Furthermore, street names are frequently influenced by politics which results in whatever suffix best fits the purposes and opinions (i.e. which ending fits best) of the relevant body.
Ally–a urban back-street, used for deliveries, often poorly paved/unpaved.
Um… No not quite.
An Ally is a fictional lawyer from Boston.
An Alli is a diet drug that caused loss of bowel control in some patients.
An Alley, on the other hand, is a an actress who became famous playing a bar patron in Boston as well as an urban back-street, used for deliveries, often poorly paved/unpaved.
No, “ally” = person on your side in a conflict; “alley” = what you said. 
“Place” generally means a short, often cul-de-sac street, whose name og\ften derives either from what it is adjacent to (Cathedral Place runs behind the cathedral) or is derived from the mpre significant street it debouches onto (Sycamore Place is the acess to a small development off Sycamore Street).
“Square” was in origin a rectangular commons area, often at or near city center, but is now often used to ptovide a mnemonic name for a development, e.g., the Merchants Bank HQ is on Merchants Square.
“Drive” seems to most often be a long and winding road (heh), perhaps named after and following a natural landform (Ridge Drive, Waterside Drive).
When “Road” is used within a city, it is usually one of the oldest roadways and the name often references the place or thing outside that city to which it leads.
My county uses “road” for all of the roads it maintains. Evidently some of the roads had other names before they started doing that, so now there are roads with names like “Jones Street Road” or “Smith Lane Road.”
And then there’s the system in Hamburg (on which I shan’t elaborate, having never been to Hamburg).
In Fresno, CA, they keep it (sort-of) simple. Nearly ALL vehicular transportation structures are deemed “Avenue”, except for some in the downtown area and sporadic exceptions elsewhere.
In NYC, in Queens, while avenues and streets do not generally run parallel, “drives,” and “roads” seem to have been used when blocks were divided up into smaller blocks.
I remember that when I lived in Astoria, a neighborhood in Queens, I could quite honestly and accurately say to people “I live on 30th, between 30th and 30th.” Meaning that I lived on 30th Street between 30th Drive and 30th Avenue.
And it’s the usual word in Scandinavian (unless, of course, we use something else).
Here in Melbourne, near where I used to live, we have High Street Road. I don’t know what to think about that.