--- title: "Parkway" url: "https://commonwaysystem.org/patterns/arterials/parkway/" id: "ART-PKY-07" description: "A roadway historically designed as a scenic, landscaped route, typically featuring a planted median and limited access, whose modern implementations vary widely between two distinct traditions: a limited-access, freeway-like facility, and a slower, arterial-scale boulevard-like facility running through or alongside parkland." updated: "2026-09-10" --- # Parkway `ART-PKY-07` Situational / Discouraged Arterial Parkway A roadway historically designed as a scenic, landscaped route, typically featuring a planted median and limited access, whose modern implementations vary widely between two distinct traditions: a limited-access, freeway-like facility, and a slower, arterial-scale boulevard-like facility running through or alongside parkland. ## Related Media The items below come from outside the Commonway System, external videos, podcasts, and articles related to this page's topic, not part of the guidebook itself. Aligned ### [Freeways stopped being PRETTY (And that's a shame!)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzDreswVQAs) Road Guy Rob Rob tells the story of the Merritt Parkway as a showcase of landscape architecture, with planted medians and 68 individually designed bridges, then asks why the Interstate highways built two decades later abandoned beauty for pure machine efficiency. It is the Commonway System's parkway pattern at its best, and the freeway-like tradition that followed is exactly why the pattern now carries a Situational status. Aligned ### [America's scenic drives](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh2FSxpGSq4) CBS Sunday Morning Conor Knighton tours America's national scenic byways from Oregon to Louisiana, showing how these designated routes are preserved and experienced as journeys worth taking for their own sake. It gives the Commonway System's Scenic Highway / Byway pattern a concrete national reference, including the federal designation program the pattern cites. Aligned ### [Parkways - Transportation](https://www.nps.gov/subjects/transportation/parkways.htm) National Park Service NPS describes its parkways as roads designed for scenic motoring through protected corridors, with pull-offs, lower speed limits, and landscape-first design built as 1930s job-creation projects. This is the federal expression of the Commonway System's parkway pattern, where the road is shaped by the landscape instead of by throughput. Context only ### [Roads to inequality: How white supremacy was built into New York's parkways](https://www.beaconjournal.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2021/04/28/new-york-parkway-madison-grant-suburbs-inequality-racism-discrimination/3280562001/) Journal News (via Akron Beacon Journal) The investigation traces how Madison Grant's Bronx River Parkway was built for leisurely nature drives by car-owning suburbanites, while Robert Moses' Long Island parkways used low bridges and truck and bus bans that physically kept city bus riders out. It documents the caution behind the Commonway System's Situational rating: a parkway's beauty does not stop its design from deciding who is allowed to use it. Aligned ### [National Scenic Byways Program](https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/hep/scenic_byways/) Federal Highway Administration FHWA's official program page explains how roads earn National Scenic Byway or All-American Road designation under 23 U.S.C. Section 162 for outstanding scenic, historic, cultural, natural, recreational, or archaeological qualities, with grants for corridor management plans. It is the authoritative reference for the Commonway System's Scenic Highway / Byway pattern and the exact federal program the page cites. Aligned ### [Skyline Drive and Shenandoah National Park](https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-stuff-you-missed-in-histor-21124503/episode/skyline-drive-shenandoah-national-park-278682527/) Stuff You Missed in History Class The episode traces how Skyline Drive and the Blue Ridge Parkway were designed as naturalistic scenic drives through the Southern Appalachians, with NPS landscape architects shaping the road to frame the scenery and serve the drive itself. It gives the history behind the Commonway System's Scenic Highway / Byway pattern: a low-density, low-development-pressure arterial where the journey is the point. Typical at: Rural Suburban Compact Urban ## Speed and modal hierarchy Design speed & speed limit \[SPEED LIMIT 35\] \[SPEED LIMIT 40\] \[SPEED LIMIT 45\] \[SPEED LIMIT 55\] Follows the Arterial density-tiered baseline for its typical Rural, Suburban, Compact, and Urban contexts. A Parkway meeting genuine freeway design standards should be read as a Freeway pattern instead, which carries no speed rule at all. See [Design Speed & Speed Limits](https://commonwaysystem.org/guide/design-speed.md). Modal hierarchy Transit > Pedestrian > Bicycle > Vehicle > Freight Follows the Arterial base order without an override. A Parkway meeting genuine freeway design standards should be read as a Freeway pattern instead, which carries no modal hierarchy at all. ## Design notes The term "parkway" carries genuinely conflicting meanings across American road-building history, spanning a limited-access freeway-like facility and a slower boulevard-like facility through or alongside parkland.[1] A Parkway built to genuine freeway standards falls outside CS's Functional Classification system entirely and should be read as a Freeway pattern instead; this page's guidance does not apply to it. The more historically common case, a Parkway that does not meet freeway standards, must be classified and designed as an Arterial, subject to all Arterial standards including the no-direct-access, no-on-street-parking rule, since AASHTO's own functional classification system carries no separate parkway category.[2] The scenic, landscaped character historically associated with parkways can and should be retained through median plantings, tree canopy, and generous right-of-way, but character alone does not exempt the facility from Arterial access-management rules. This classification ambiguity, not a design tradeoff, is why the pattern carries the stronger Discouraged caution rather than an ordinary Situational one; it renders under the publication's combined Situational/Discouraged badge since Discouraged is not yet a distinct status value. ## Related patterns [default Freeway pattern](https://commonwaysystem.org/patterns/freeways/default.md) (FRE-DEF-01) (redirect target for freeway-standard parkways); [default Arterial pattern](https://commonwaysystem.org/patterns/arterials/default.md) (ART-DEF-01) (the standards a non-freeway parkway must follow); [Boulevard](https://commonwaysystem.org/patterns/arterials/boulevard.md) (ART-BLV-02), [Scenic Highway/Byway](https://commonwaysystem.org/patterns/arterials/scenic-highway-byway.md) (ART-SCB-03) (related but distinct Arterial subtypes) ## References 1. Precedent-based [National Park Service, _Park Roads and Parkways: A History_. Documents the freeway-standard vs. boulevard-standard tension in American parkway design, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation's unsuccessful push to AASHTO's own Task Force on Geometric Design for a distinct parkway classification.](https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/roads/shs4.htm) 2. Legal / regulatory [American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, _A Policy on Geometric Design of Highways and Streets_ ("Green Book").](https://store.transportation.org/Item/PublicationDetail?ID=4127)