superhighway

Noun

superhighway (plural superhighways)

1. (US) An expressway, especially one designed for high speeds.
2. (broadly) A major route that carries most of the traffic going in a given direction by a specified mode of transportation.
   • We cannot and should not be rebuilding old "two lane" sections of the air transport system with segments having "eight lane superhighway" capacity without knowing the full economic, safety, and environmental impacts of the entire air traffic superhighway.1996, United States Congress House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. Subcommittee on Aviation, Computer outages at the Federal Aviation Administration's Air Traffic Control Center in...
   • By 1400, however, Western Europeans had developed their own versions of oceangoing ships, and these transformed the much narrower Atlantic Ocean from a barrier into a superhighway.2015, Ian Morris, Stephen Macedo, Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels: How Human Values Evolve, →ISBN
3. (figuratively) The primary mechanism used in the movement of electronic data or information; information superhighway.
   • In the discussion about the pros and cons of the electronic superhighway, people often refer to the Internet.1996, V. J. J. M. Bekkers, Bert-Jaap Koops, Sjaak Nouwt, Emerging Electronic Highways:New Challenges for Politics and Law, →ISBN
   • How should we reinterpret the universal service obligation for the superhighway? It is clear that price is already a barrier to access to the basic telephone service.1996, Richard Collins, Converging Media? Converging Regulation?, →ISBN, page 29