What is the difference between a street, avenue, road and boulevard?

What's the difference between a Highway, Road, Street, Avenue, and a Boulevard.?

• Answer:

  Although some of these terms can be used interchangeably in the area where I live the following is a pretty standard meaning for each. A highway is a hard surface conveyance owned and maintained by the state or federal government. A road, although it can be maintained by the state is usually taken care of by the county and can include non hard surface conveyances such as gravel or dirt roads. A street is usually located within the confines of a community and is maintained by that community and is found a great deal in residential areas. An avenue is usually a main thoroughfare in the community for higher traffic conditions and may have multiple lanes of traffic. A boulevard is a street that usually goes to or along side something special and may have a center divider between the lanes of traffic.Boulevards were, at one time reserved for thoroughfares that went through the more upscale areas of a city. Remember, this is not set in stone as different areas may use the same name in a completely different way but for us this is pretty accurate. Hope it helps