road

Table of Contents

Introduction
History
- Roads of antiquity
  - Ancient roads of the Mediterranean and Middle East
    - Cretan stone roads
    - Roads of Persia and Babylon
    - Egypt
    - Greece
  - Ancient roads of Europe
    - The Amber Routes
    - The Roman roads
  - Ancient roads of South and East Asia
    - India
    - China’s Imperial Highway
    - The Silk Road
- The Middle Ages
  - Europe and Asia
  - Inca roads of South America
- The birth of the modern road
  - The master road builders
    - Trésaguet
    - Telford
    - McAdam
  - Early U.S. road systems
    - The Lancaster Turnpike
    - The Cumberland Road
- Roads in the age of the automobile
  - New paving materials
  - Changes in finance
    - From corvée to toll
    - From local to national funding
  - New highways
    - The parkway
    - The freeway
  - National and international highway systems
    - The United Kingdom
    - The United States and Canada
The modern road
- Road engineering
  - Planning
  - Road design
    - Alignment and profile
    - Pavement
    - Drainage
  - Financing
  - Construction
  - Maintenance
- Road operation
  - Traffic management
    - Traffic control
    - Legal control
  - Safety

References & Edit History Quick Facts & Related Topics

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road

transportation

Also known as: street

Written by Maxwell Gordon Lay, Fred J. Benson•All

Fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Article History

Key People:: Cyrus Stevens Avery; Thomas Telford; John Loudon McAdam; August Leopold Crelle; Pierre-Marie-Jérôme Trésaguet

Related Topics:: expressway; Roman road system; boulevard; Autobahn; pavement

See all related content

road, traveled way on which people, animals, or wheeled vehicles move. In modern usage the term road describes a rural, lesser traveled way, while the word street denotes an urban roadway. Highway refers to a major rural traveled way; more recently it has been used for a road, in either a rural or urban area, where points of entrance and exit for traffic are limited and controlled. The most ancient name for these arteries of travel seems to be the antecedent of the modern way. Way stems from the Middle English wey, which in turn branches from the Latin veho ...(100 of 10743 words)

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