History. The concept of limited-access automobile highways dates back to the New York City area Parkway system

The concept of limited-access automobile highways dates back to the New York City area Parkway system, whose construction began in 1907–1908; but parkways are traditionally distinguished from freeways by lower design speeds and a ban on commercial traffic. Designers elsewhere also researched similar ideas, especially in Germany, where the Autobahn would become the first national freeway system.

However, in 1925, Italy was technically the first country to build a freeway, which linked Milan to Lake Como. It is known in Italy as the Autostrada dei Laghi.

Meanwhile, in England, the related concept of the motorway was first proposed by Sidney Webb in a 1910 book “The King's Highway” but was not formally embraced by the government until the passage of the Special Roads Act 1949. In 1926, the English intellectual Hillarie Belloc recognized the necessity of grade-separated roads for “rapid and heavy traffic”, but thought they would be the exception rather than the rule: “The creation of a great network of local highways suitable for rapid and heavy traffic is impossible. Even if the wealth of the community increases, the thing would be impossible, because it would mean the destruction of such a proportion of buildings as would dislocate all social life.”

The word “freeway” first surfaced in the mid-1930s in proposals for the improvement of the New York City parkway network.

The first long-distance rural freeway in the United States is generally considered to be the Pennsylvania Turnpike, which opened on October 1, 1940. The Turnpike was so advanced for its time that tourists even had picnics in the median (that is, after it was already open to traffic) and local entrepreneurs did a brisk business in souvenirs. It was designed so that straightaways could handle maximum speeds of 102 miles per hour, and curves could be taken as fast as 90.

Shortly thereafter, on December 30, 1940, California opened its first freeway, the Arroyo Seco Parkway (now called the Pasadena Freeway) which connected Pasadena with Los Angeles. And in 1942, Detroit, Michigan opened the world's first urban depressed freeway, the Davison Freeway. Meanwhile, traffic in Los Angeles continued to deteriorate and local officials began planning the huge freeway network for which the city is now famous.