In Maine, Is There Any Actual Difference Between a Road and a Street?

Signs, signs... Everywhere there's signs.

Honestly, more often than not, you disregard the names of public roads and streets as you pass them. Once I know where someplace is and it's etched into my brain, I could very easily forget the name of the road altogether. Even the address. I'm always needing to ditch information to make room for more, hahahaha. Not really. I'm just kind of an idiot.

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But I can say, that I have been known to drive by different spots and wonder why one place is a street, or a road. Or why is another a place, or a boulevard? Are these arbitrary decisions, or is there some actual rhyme and reason to it? I sort of assumed it was dealer's choice, so to speak. Like, it's the choice of whomever gets to name the road.

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All streets are roads, but not all roads are streets.

So, let's start with that statement. In broad terms, roads are a way of traveling between two points. So, a road can be perfectly empty, with nothing but grass and blue skies. A street, in broad terms, will always have structures on both sides, typically with people living in them. So they're definitely in more developed areas.

So as you move around Maine's travel ways, it depends as much on where you are. But those are the broadest distinctions. So, yes... You could argue there's definitely a difference between streets and roads in Maine. What about all those other things though? There's more than streets and roads.

There's boulevards, courts, drives, parkways...

All of these actually have their own breakdown as well. It's not nearly as free-spirited a process as it seems. For instance, courts usually are cul-de-sacs. Drives tend to follow the landscape they're on, and mimic the terrain a bit more. Lanes are usually narrow streets with no median, in a residential area.

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Again, if you'd asked me how the process works, I'd have assumed it was all up to whomever had the delight of naming the road. But nope... It's got way more to do with location and terrain, than I ever thought. Sure, you may have never given it a second thought, but I also bet you wouldn't have been able to answer the question...