SoCal uses “the” because we had some of the first freeways and they had names, the Ventura Freeway, the Santa Monica Freeway, the San Diego Freeway… They still do and we use them, but now they have Interstate numbers as well, so we’ll say “The 101,” “The 10,” and “The Fucking 405” respectively.
I’m pretty sure the distinction is not 💯%, but in California we have State Highways which are large through roads, but have some access from local streets. For example PCH, the Pacific Coast Highway, (CA1) connects all the beach towns but becomes the main street in each one. Some houses in Malibu have barely a driveway onto it, and in other places there may be beachgoers’ cars and RVs parked along the guardrail.
Freeways have free flowing traffic with access limited to onramps and offramps, no stop lights or tollbooths. (We have some Toll Roads but don’t call them freeways, and we have some FastPass toll lanes on freeways, using electronic monitoring, but the other lanes are toll-free.)
That’s a generalization and I’m sure there’s exceptions and overlap.
Soda for sure! Fun regionalism is that we call our freeways/highways “the 5” instead of I-5 in SoCal
I call them just their number. No letter. Like as in: you take 95 instead of I-95.
SoCal uses “the” because we had some of the first freeways and they had names, the Ventura Freeway, the Santa Monica Freeway, the San Diego Freeway… They still do and we use them, but now they have Interstate numbers as well, so we’ll say “The 101,” “The 10,” and “The Fucking 405” respectively.
Is a freeway different than a highway because the east coast has a lot of the first ones as well?
I’m pretty sure the distinction is not 💯%, but in California we have State Highways which are large through roads, but have some access from local streets. For example PCH, the Pacific Coast Highway, (CA1) connects all the beach towns but becomes the main street in each one. Some houses in Malibu have barely a driveway onto it, and in other places there may be beachgoers’ cars and RVs parked along the guardrail.
Freeways have free flowing traffic with access limited to onramps and offramps, no stop lights or tollbooths. (We have some Toll Roads but don’t call them freeways, and we have some FastPass toll lanes on freeways, using electronic monitoring, but the other lanes are toll-free.)
That’s a generalization and I’m sure there’s exceptions and overlap.
Freeways are similar to the bypass, maybe. Although I think it runs into a toll road. Idk.