Yeah, it’s a bit difficult to think of what words you use when all the words are part of your vocabulary. I dont think I usually say “interstate.” For me, it’ll be “take the Stevenson” or “get on the highway/expressway” or “take 55,” etc.
Here’s a question: does the term “freeway” exclude “tollways”? I think I’ve heard someone make that distinction before. Myself, I never parsed “free” as the sense of “free” meaning “without monetary cost” but rather something like “unobstructed” or “open.”
I always assumed that “freeway” meant a non-toll road. “unobstructed” wouldn’t even occur to me – how many roads do you drive on that intentionally have obstructions?
In any event, I grew up in New Jersey where they don’t have them. I heard the term on TV, because TV shows are made in California and all the writers and directors swim in a sea of California Culture and don’t notice when it clashes with that of anywhere else. Besides, there’s famous Walt Disney goofy cartoon entitled “Freeway Phobia” that got shown on the Disney TV show (and, I think, Driver’s Ed classes)
I mean in a more metaphorical sense. In that whole “freedom of movement” kind of vein. Like, no stop signs, no stop lights, etc.
I’ve wondered the same, not having lived in an area with a lot of “freeways”. I assume that it originally referred to not being a toll road since before the automobile era, a lot of long distance roads were “pikeways” or tolled roads. But I also wonder if it refers to their limited-access nature.
The primary definitions I’m finding in dictionaries are like this, from Dictionary.com:
- an express highway with no intersections, usually having traffic routed on and off by means of a cloverleaf.
or m-w.com:
- an expressway with fully controlled access
The second definition at both, though, is the highway without toll fees one.
Wiktionary is similar:
(Australia, Canada, US) A road designed for safe, high-speed operation of motor vehicles throguh the elimination of at-grade intersections, usually divided and having at least two lanes in each direction; a dual carriageway with no at-grade crossings, a motorway.
with the note:
In Australian usage, the term freeway is sometimes avoided for toll roads.
And, yes, “toll-free highway” as the second definition there, as well.
Hmmm…the Institute of Transportation Engineers says:
Freeway : A divided major roadway with full control of access and with no crossings at grade. This definition applies to toll as well as toll-free roads.
But how engineers define it does not necessarily reflect common usage, of course.
There was one episode of “Longmire” where it seems even the writers forgot that the show was supposed to be set in Wyoming, and not New Mexico. There was something about Walt or Vic “popping over” to Arizona - like it was a couple hours drive. Like they forgot you had to go through all of Utah to get to AZ !
My friends in Santa Fe loved that the show was filmed in NM. They had hiked to “Walt’s cabin” !
In Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, the gang walked from the convenience store on Stassney to a Whataburger on Oltorf in the space of a conversation, a trip that is normally at least 4 miles and would take almost 1.5 hours (including crossing IH-35). I used to go to both of those locations every now and then, so I found it amusing.
I think this one is rather famous: In a scene in The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman’s character is driving from San Francisco to Berkeley, and an aerial shot shows him driving on the upper deck of the Bay Bridge. In reality, the upper deck carries only westbound traffic, so he’s going the wrong way. (Of course, if he were driving correctly, on the lower deck, the car wouldn’t have been visible from above.)
I’ve lived in NYC my entire life- and if you heard someone use “freeway” generically , it was either a tourist or a recent transplant. I disagree with with RealityChuck in only one respect - the most common generic term I hear is “highway”.
Problem here is you’re looking up the definition of “freeway,” but not its usage.
New Yorkers would certainly understand what is meant by a freeway – they watch TV and know the term from shows set in California. But the don’t use it in everyday speech because there is no highway called “freeway” in the northeast.
I’m not sure what you’re disagreeing with. My question was about the usage. I said the technical definition may not reflect common usage. It does seem most people exclude tollways from the definition of freeways, though some freeeways (I’ve found) may have express lanes that are tolled.
Later seasons of The Office (US) had Dunder Mifflin’s headquarters in Tallahassee. Tallahassee’s airport is small, regional, and notoriously expensive to fly to/from (many Tallahasseans actually drive 2.5 hours to Jacksonville to get cheaper flights). But then they actually go there - only that wasn’t here (or near here). Tallahassee is more like Georgia in flora and fauna and is very hilly. My guess is they filmed in Sarasota or Ft. Myers waaaaay down on the west coast of Florida. The architecture and landscaping were all wrong for Tallahassee or the surrounding area.
Finally, we’re a government/college/hospital town and not anybody’s idea of “big national company’s headquarters”.
‘Pensacola, Wings of Gold’. The Pensacola Fla. area is one of the hilliest sections of Florida, but it’s funny how many scenes shown “out in the country” have a California high desert look, or High Sierra look.
Another one made me literally laugh out loud ( the movie being funny enough to put me in a mood not to scoff ). ‘The Out of Towners’ from 1970. The couple on the NYC bound plane ( Jack Lemmon and Sandy Dennis ). The husband detailing the tantalizing schedule of events leading to a romantic evening for them. This guy from “Ohio” thought that you could land at JFK airport at 7:05 PM and check into a hotel in midtown Manhattan at 7:40 PM. Good luck at even being curbside to hail a cab within 40 minutes.
Breaking Bad was one show that actually did that. Initially it was going to be set in Riverside, CA, but the producers choose to film it in New Mexico for financial reasons. But Vince Gilligan realized that would mean they would have to avoid getting the Sandia Mountains in the shots, so he just changed the setting to Albuquerque.
I have a memory from the early 70s that indicates that Route 17 was called, at least in some parts of NY state, the “Quickway”. I even remember seeing the word on road signs.
Against All Odds (1984) is an inferior remake of Out of the Past (1947), but it does feature an exciting car race between Jeff Bridges in a Porsche 911 and James Woods in a Ferrari 308. Starting from the northeast end of UCLA, they head east on Sunset Blvd., going through Beverly Glen towards Beverly Hills, but at various points in the 2.5 minute sequence, they are seen heading west; and at various other points, they have magically moved to a different part of Sunset Blvd. along that same route. It was rather disconcerting when I saw it.
“Freeway” is the standard term both in western Pennsylvania and in northern Ohio for a limited access highway, even though I can’t think of any roads in either area with “freeway” in their name. Like, I-90 is a freeway.
And while I already mentioned the scarcity of non-local fiction set in Cleveland, I can cite a couple of examples from folks who don’t come from around here.
First, like most places, in Cleveland it’s common to leave off the word for a kind of street: Like, W. 117th Street is usually referred to as just W. 117th, or Detroit Avenue is usually just Detroit… except that West Boulevard is never just “West”, and likewise for East Boulevard on the other end of town. The name of the street, to any local, is always “West Boulevard”, in full.
Second, the local community college is very occasionally referred to by its full name, Cuyahoga Community College. Almost always, though, it’s Tri-C. And it’s absolutely never called just Cuyahoga.
Pretty much every movie/TV series ever made that took place in Alaska got it wrong. Wrong vegetation, wrong types of mountains, etc. I can tell almost immediately. Some have used opening shots of actual glaciers and the like, but the scenes in the movie are filmed elsewhere, sometimes in Canada, but usually somewhere that does not remotely resemble Alaska. One of the dumbest was a scene in an old TV series where a woman comes running into the cabin, frightened because “there’s a snake in the well”. Loud “bzzzzzt” on that one.
Decades ago, the TV show Movin’ On filmed an episode in my home town in Maryland. They came the wrong way up a one way street that trucks were not permitted on, then made a right turn that would have had them taking out two lanes of opposing traffic. Sorry, the whole area was razed and refigured many years ago.
I would give them that one but anyone with half a brain – this leaves out Benjamin – would not drive up the peninsula and into The City if he was in a hurry to reach Berkeley. Simply driving up East Bay from the south would be much faster.