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i really don't use any of those terms. i call them by name - route 80, route 46 (pronounced "root" ), route 78. if I had to use one of those 3 terms as a descriptor, I'd say "highway" (i.e. "yeah, when you get to the highway, route 80, go east").
i call the NJ Turnpike and GS Parkway by those names (omitting the NJ and GS part).
and, like lammius said, when I'm discussing NYC highways, I refer to them by their name, not number. The NY Thruway is just that, not I-87. (and i NEVER use the letter "I" locally either).
when i was in Cali i REFUSED to say "The 5, The 405" - didn't sound right to me. In FL, TX I'd either say "Route 10 or Route 4" - SOMETIMES I'd say I-10 or I-4.
Bottom line - almost everything without a name is "ROOT" to me
Another interesting thing about the NY/NNJ area is that people call these roads by their full names, not numbers. For example, I-495 is called the Long Island Expressway. Nobody calls it 495, rather by its name or the abbreviation L.I.E. Similarly, I bet few people would know the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (BQE) as Interstate 278.
Yeah, I find that curious, too. Take I-94, for example. According to Googlemaps, in Detroit, it's called the Edsel Ford Freeway all through the city. In the Gary, IN suburbs it's called the Tri-State Expressway and the Kingery Expressway. At the IL state line, it becomes the Bishop Ford Expressway well up into the South Side of Chicago, wherupon it becomes the Dan Ryan Expressway, then the Kennedy Expressway, then the Edens Expressway. When it gets to Milwaukee, it's called the North-South Freeway. When I lived in Milwaukee, it was still called the North South Expressway. The leg extending west from downtown was called the East West Expressway, but today it's just labeled "94" by Googlemaps. Here in the Twin Cities, 94 is the major east west route across both cities and the entire metro, but it is simply called "94". The Twin Cities has only one named limited access road that I know of, called the Crosstown Highway, shortened to "The Crosstown". A few years back, I noticed all the signs aound it removed the name Crosstown, and replaced it with "62", which is the state highway route that follows it. Not sure what the aversion to local names is!
Interesting. Back east that would be called a boulevard or some other appropriate nomenclature for an arterial roadway. There aren't even any jughandles there!
Here is an expressway in NY:
Photo from the New York Times
What do you drive on to get to work.. in El Paso I take the freeway.. in Mississippi, I took the interstate... I have heard all 3 terms used.. where you live what do you call the express way?
I have rarely if ever heard anyone refer to the highways as expressways.
In Texas we just called it by the number, interstate, or highway. I think in Houston they may call it the freeway but that's about it.
I have lived in both Corpus Christi and Dallas...in Corpus Christi, the numbers were used to refer to Interstate 37, US 181, or TX 44. However, TX 286 was "Crosstown" which was short for the "Crosstown Expressway" and TX 358 was either N.P.I.D. or S.P.I.D. (abbreviated forms of North/South Padre Island Drive).
Here in Dallas, it depends on which one is being referred to: for instance, you would say "I-20" for Interstate 20 but would say "Central Expressway" for US-75.
I would say there is about an even mix of using numbers and proper names.
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My father was a pilot and pilots always refer to runways as say "runway three six" , never "runway thirtysix". So he always called highways by their numbers that way too. I picked it from him so I usually say, for example, " highway one nine one" or simply "one nine one". The exceptions to this are interstates in which I say "eye twenty" and loops around cities which I just call "the loop". If there is any confusion about which loop I mean, then I will say "loop three three eight" or "loop two five zero".
My father was a pilot and pilots always refer to runways as say "runway three six" , never "runway thirtysix". So he always called highways by their numbers that way too. I picked it from him so I usually say, for example, " highway one nine one" or simply "one nine one". The exceptions to this are interstates in which I say "eye twenty" and loops around cities which I just call "the loop". If there is any confusion about which loop I mean, then I will say "loop three three eight" or "loop two five zero".
I used to say that some highways seemed like runways anyway with how fast people were driving!
For instance, it's the 5 freeway when it passes through SD, LA, Portland, and Seattle. However, in rural areas I would say Interstate 5.
It's the 91 freeway and the 60 freeway in urban areas, and Highway 91 and Highway 60 in rural areas.
Up here in the Seattle area we say "I5" or Interstate 5, natives to the area and people that have lived here for a long time never say "the 5 freeway".
Not every highway here is an expressway. The expressways all have two features in common: they are either part of the interstate system (or built to interstate specifications) and they are non-toll highways. Almost all of them also enter the city core; the one exception is the Elgin-O'Hare Expressway (which of course goes to neither Elgin nor O'Hare). None of the tollways or outer interstate freeways (57, 80/94, etc.) are called expressways.
Which gets me to another point: highway, freeway and interstate are not interchangeable. To be an interstate, it has to be designated as part of the federal interstate system and built to certain standards of grade, width, access, thickness, et cetera. To be a freeway, it must be toll-free. "Highway" is the most inclusive/general of the three terms; a freeway and interstate are highways by nature, but not all highways are freeways (some are tollways) and not all highways are interstates (most are not) or even limited-access like interstates are.
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), route 78. if I had to use one of those 3 terms as a descriptor, I'd say "highway" (i.e. "yeah, when you get to the highway, route 80, go east"). 
