arterial road

arterial road (plural arterial roads)

1. A major thoroughfare, particularly one used to provide a large capacity for travelling some distance. (In American English, such roads are often classified as highways (either secondary highways or limited-access highways).
   • 1932, Dorothy L. Sayers, chapter 1, in Have His Carcase:

     The road, narrow and in poor repair, was almost deserted, all the heavy traffic passing by the wider arterial road which ran importantly inland from town to town, despising the windings of the coast with its few scattered hamlets.