the United States, Parkways are defined as follows:
A type of road
A broad landscaped thoroughfare; especially : one from which trucks and other heavy vehicles are excluded.[1]
A roadway in a park : a landscaped thoroughfare connecting parks[1]
An expressway located on a strip of land legally constituting a public park and therefore not open to heavy vehicles[1]
A landscaped strip of land paralleling or running in the center of a thoroughfare[1]
Parkways are fairly common in New York City and its environs, and rarer in most of the USA.
Since the late 20th century, many places have added buses, taxis, and limousines to the list of vehicles authorized to use parkways in order to promote the use of public transportation. These exceptions to the commercial or heavy traffic rule tended to blur the distinction between parkways and freeways.