• Beltway

A beltway, loop (American English), ring road, or orbital motorway (British English) is a circumferential highway found around or within many cities.

Beltway, orbital motorway, perimeter loop, beltline, and similar terms refer to an expressway/motorway/freeway style standard road that often originally enclosed the built up area and was later encroached upon by developed areas.

Ring road may sometimes refer to a beltway-style road, but more commonly indicates a road or series of roads within a city or town that have been joined together by town planners to form an orbital distributor style road, but where the standard of road could be anything from an ordinary city street up to an expressway level. The principal difference is that a ring road is an orbital distributor road system designed from already existing roads, as opposed to a beltway which is designed from new as such a road system. A ring road designation also implies a more inner-city road designed to route traffic around a city centre, as opposed to routing traffic around a larger conurbation.

• Bypass (road)

A bypass is a road or highway that avoids or "bypasses" a built-up area, town, or village, to let through traffic flow without interference from local traffic, to reduce congestion in the built-up area, and to improve road safety.

If there are no strong land use controls, buildings are built along a bypass, converting it into an ordinary town road, and the bypass may eventually become as congested as the local streets it was intended to avoid. Shopping centers and some other companies often are built there for ease of access, while homes are often avoided for noise reasons.

• High-quality dual carriageway

A dual carriageway (British English) or divided highway (North American English) is a road or highway in which the two directions of traffic are separated by a central barrier or strip of land, known as a central reservation (British English) or median (North American English). This type of road is usually able to carry a great deal more traffic than normal single carriageways (British English) or two-lane roads (North American English) and boulevards.

• Junction (road)

A road junction is a location where vehicular traffic going in different directions can proceed in a controlled manner designed to minimize accidents. In some cases, vehicles can change between different routes or directions of travel.

However, with the 20th century advent of road traffic, roads became much busier and junctions became clogged with vehicles unable to cross each other's paths. In modern practice, bypasses and ring roads are used to keep through traffic out of major population centers.

There are two different types of junction between roads:

- Interchanges are junctions where roads pass above or below one another, preventing a single point of conflict by utilizing grade separation and slip roads. The terms motorway junction and highway junction typically refer to this layout.

- Intersections do not use grade separation (they are at-grade) and roads cross directly. Forms of these junction types include roundabouts and traffic circles, priority junctions, and junctions controlled by traffic lights or signals.

• Highway

A highway is a main road for travel by the public between important destinations, such as cities, large towns, and states. Highway designs vary widely and can range from a two-lane road without margins to a multi-lane, grade-separated expressway, freeway, or motorway. In English, British, and American law, the word "highway" is sometimes used to denote any public way used for travel, whether major highway, freeway, street, lane, alley, pathway, dirt track, footpaths, and trails, and navigable waterways. However, in practical and useful meaning, a "highway" is a major and significant, well-constructed road that is capable of carrying reasonably-heavy to extremely-heavy traffic.

In the United States, "highway" is a general term for denoting a public way, including the entire area within the right-of-way, and includes many forms:

1. a high-speed, limited-access road like expressways, freeways, and large toll highways.

2. an important road that connects cities and large towns.

3. any road or street, or a travel way of any kind, including pedestrian ways, trails, and navigable waterways, to which the public has a perpetual right of use.

In some places, "highway" is a synonym for "road" or "street", and in some cases, the word "highway" is simply used in cases of carelessness and laziness on the part of the speaker, who believes that "street", "road", and "highway" are all synonymous and uses them accordingly.