Many of these roadways are major avenues that serve as the city's principal traffic arteries.

Every state-named roadway is an avenue except for California Street and Ohio Drive.

While streets in Washington, D.C. are generally laid out in a grid pattern, the state-named avenues often form diagonal connections between the city's many traffic circles and squares as envisioned in the L'Enfant Plan for the city.

However, avenues named for Arizona, Hawaii, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Puerto Rico connect to no other state-named roadways.

Avenues named for Connecticut, Georgia, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin continue into neighboring Maryland, often as state highways, but none of the state-named avenues continue into Virginia.