Difference between free way (motorway) and a simple highway?

In pavement engineering we mostly hear the terms highway, motorway and freeway. These terms sometimes causes confusion about what they mean in real and what is the basic difference in them. In this post we will try to find the basic difference between these terms.

Difference between motorway and simple highway

Firstly all these terms specifies a paved surface which is used for transportation of high speed vehicles that may include trucks, cars, bikes etc. Motor way and Free way is similar in this sense that both of these have limited access which means to enter in a motorway or freeway there is specified path followed by a collector road, in a similar manner the exit is also controlled. Where as in highway the access is not controlled there are a lot of paths provided where the access is very easily provided. But even then the motorway and freeway are different in the sense that, in freeway there are no toll plazas and no toll tax is collected which means it is free and thus it is known as freeway but that is not the case with a motorway. In Motorways the toll tax is applied, in various countries mostly developing countries the project of a motorways is awarded to some foreign firm or contractor which doesn’t take the cost from the client but for some specified time the toll is being collected by the contractors to complete its cost plus profit after which the project will be handed over to the client which may apply the toll tax for maintenance and up gradation of the project.