---
title: "Default (Freeway)"
url: "https://commonwaysystem.org/patterns/freeways/default/"
id: "FRE-DEF-01"
description: "The baseline Freeway typology, a limited-access road, intentionally out of the Commonway System's detailed design scope."
updated: "2026-09-10"
---

# Default (Freeway)

`FRE-DEF-01`

Recommended Freeway

Default (Freeway)

A limited-access road with grade-separated interchanges and no direct property access. Freeway is intentionally out of the Commonway System's detailed design scope; no modal hierarchy or speed regulation applies within CS.[1]

## 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

### [You've Been Lied To About Roads For 60 Years](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVq7XOXkg1U)

Global Cycling Network

Covers "junk roads," traffic-model incentives to overbuild, and the trillion-dollar cost of designing roads around growth projections that the roads themselves inflate.

Typical at: Undeveloped Rural Suburban Compact

Urban is an edge case. Core is an unlikely pairing, marked unlikely rather than edge case on purpose: a limited-access road cutting through a Core-density area is the kind of pattern the Commonway System would flag for retrofit, not treat as a realistic design target.

## Design notes

Freeway entries are listed in the Commonway System for completeness and cross-reference, not as a detailed design guide the way Local, Collector, and Arterial patterns are. CS's scope is street and road design; Freeway-scale interchange and alignment design belongs to a different discipline.

## Related patterns

[Grade-Separated Interchange](https://commonwaysystem.org/patterns/intersections/grade-separated-interchange.md) (INT-GSI-10) (the Intersection pattern governing where this pattern's design guidance resumes), [Default (No Parking, No Direct Property Access)](https://commonwaysystem.org/patterns/arterials/default.md) (ART-DEF-01) (the Arterial pattern a Freeway interchange typically connects into)

## References

1.  Legal / regulatory [FHWA, _Highway Functional Classification Concepts, Criteria and Procedures_.](https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/planning/processes/statewide/related/hwy-functional-classification-2023.pdf)