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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.

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.

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.

default Freeway pattern (FRE-DEF-01) (redirect target for freeway-standard parkways); default Arterial pattern (ART-DEF-01) (the standards a non-freeway parkway must follow); Boulevard (ART-BLV-02), Scenic Highway/Byway (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.
  2. Legal / regulatory American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, A Policy on Geometric Design of Highways and Streets ("Green Book").