Street, drive. lane, road, avenue etc. What's the difference and who decides? And who cares?

A trail is a path that's hit puberty. (hey, look... I have shrubbery)
A road is an adult trail.  (it's able to go to more places now)
A lane is a narrow road. (with just the right amount of curves)
A street is a wide lane. (it's the stripes, isn't it)
An avenue is a fat street. (we're just big curbed)
A boulevard is a avenue that's trying to impress the lanes.  (care to try my exit?)
An expressway is a boulevard that got a nice lane (cha-cha-cha)
A thoroughfare is an expressway that got dumped by a lane (but they can still be friends)
A freeway is just a bunch of desperate roads doing speed dating.  (we need lanes)

road — a wide way leading from one place to another, especially one with a specially prepared surface which vehicles can use.
avenue  — a broad road in a town or city, typically having trees at regular intervals along its sides.
street — a public road in a city, town, or village, typically with houses and buildings on one or both sides.
drive — a winding road that has its route shaped by natural features such as a lake or mountain.

Each term gives an idea of what to expect when you get there.
This makes it a little easier to recognise whether you're in the right place.

There are no strict definitions are guidelines, but there are trends:
A road is all-purpose but is often used for rural roads that are not highways.
An avenue and street tend to go through and are common in cities. In New York and other big cities "avenue" and "street" are often used to differentiate between perpendicular streets (i.e. avenues will go north-south, streets will go east-west).
A lane is often a straight low-traffic road in urban areas or a straight rural road.
A court has a cul-de-sac, a way is a short through road, a place is a short dead-end road. 
A drive is often curved. 
A boulevard or a parkway is a large multi-lane road. Boulevards tend to be more urban, parkways are landscaped and often go by or through parks. 
An expressway is a large multi-lane road with few signals to facilitate speed. 

I'm very interested in maps and civil planning, so I've learned this over the years. :)

I think that's how languages evolved.  Spanish also has different words for roads.  Calle is used the same way as street is used in English.  It means any street in a city or a town.  In my neighborhood, all of the major streets begin with Avenida and the minor streets only have names without Calle or Avenida in front of them. 

In some cities or towns, they have numbers instead of proper names, such as Calle 1, Calle 2 etc.  They're numbered so that house numbers 100 through 199 come after Calle 1, house numbers 200 through 299 come after Calle 2 etc.

Ruta is used the same way as highway is in English.  It means any highway, but there are also autopistas and autovías.  An autopista is a freeway or a motorway.  They're the same as the Interstates in the United States. 

An autovía has at least four lanes and a centre reserve like the autopista, but the difference is autovías can have either traffic crossing them at intersections or they can have exits, entrances, overpasses and underpasses.  Autopistas can't have traffic crossing them at intersections.

Rutas also have designations by the level of governemnt that builds them.  Ruta nacional means national highway, Ruta provincial means provincial highway and ruta complementaria means secondary highway.  The rutas complementarias are used in southern Argentina, and they have route letters instead of route numbers.


This post was edited by Benedict Arnold at December 15, 2020 3:05 PM MST

In some places, such as NYC's borough of Queens, there is multiple usage of the same name - 30th Avenue, 30th Road, and 30th Street.

I have only lived in small towns or even outside of the small town....so no they have not mattered to me.

I have lived on a Rural Route, Lane, Ave, Street, State Highway, Place, and Road.  

The only ones that would tell you anything about the type of road by the name are Rural Route and State Highway.