U.S. Route 25E in the context of "Tennessee State Route 32"

A right of way (also right-of-way) is a specific route that people, animals, vehicles, watercraft, or utility lines travel, or the legal status that gives them the right to do so. Rights-of-way in the physical sense include controlled-access highways, railroads, canals, hiking paths, bridle paths for horses, bicycle paths, the routes taken by high-voltage lines (also known as wayleave), utility tunnels, or simply the paved or unpaved local roads used by different types of traffic. The term highway is often used in legal contexts in the sense of "main way" to mean any public-use road or any public-use road or path. Some are restricted as to mode of use (for example, pedestrians only, pedestrians, horse and cycle riders, vehicles capable of a minimum speed).

Rights-of-way in the legal sense (the right to pass through or to operate a transportation facility) can be created in a number of different ways. In some cases, a government, transportation company, or conservation non-profit purchases the full ownership of real estate, including everything above and below the ground. Many rights-of-way are created instead by easement, which is a right to cross that does not include full ownership of the land. For example, the original owner may still retain mineral rights under the right-of-way easement, but not the right to exclude people from passing through certain parts of what would otherwise be private land.

The United States Numbered Highway System (often called U.S. Routes or U.S. Highways) is an integrated network of roads and highways numbered within a nationwide grid in the contiguous United States. As the designation and numbering of these highways were coordinated among the states, they are sometimes called Federal Highways, but the roadways were built and have always been maintained by state or local governments since their initial designation in 1926.

The route numbers and locations are coordinated by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO). The only federal involvement in AASHTO is a nonvoting seat for the United States Department of Transportation. Generally, most north-to-south highways are odd-numbered, with the lowest numbers in the east and the highest in the west, while east-to-west highways are typically even-numbered, with the lowest numbers in the north, and the highest in the south, though the grid guidelines are not rigidly followed, and many exceptions exist. Major north–south routes generally have numbers ending in "1", while major east–west routes usually have numbers ending in "0". Three-digit numbered highways are generally spur routes of parent highways; for example, U.S. Route 421 (US 421) is a spur off US 21. Some divided routes, such as US 19E/US 19W and US 25E/US 25W, exist to provide two alignments for one route. Special routes, which can be labeled as alternate, bypass or business, depending on the intended use, provide a parallel routing to the mainline U.S. Highway—an example being US 74 and its many special routes.

Some U.S. Routes are given directional suffixes to indicate a split of the main route — for instance, U.S. Route 25 (US 25) splits into US 25E (east) and US 25W (west) between Newport, Tennessee, and North Corbin, Kentucky, and US 9W is an alternate of U.S. Route 9 between Fort Lee, New Jersey, and Albany, New York. These splits were in the U.S. Highway system from the beginning, and were used when two roughly-equivalent routes existed. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) no longer assigns these numbers, and, in theory, current ones are to be eliminated "as rapidly as the State Highway Department and the Standing Committee on Highways can reach agreement". This policy was adopted by 1996; however, many of these routes still exist, mostly in Tennessee.

U.S. Route 25 or U.S. Highway 25 (US 25) is a north–south United States Numbered Highway that runs for 750 miles (1,210 km) in the Southern and Midwestern U.S. Its southern terminus is in Brunswick, Georgia, from where it proceeds mostly due north, passing through the cities of Augusta, Georgia; Greenville, South Carolina; and Asheville, North Carolina, before dividing into two branches, known as US 25W and US 25E between Newport, Tennessee, and North Corbin, Kentucky. After passing through Richmond and Lexington, Kentucky, it reaches its northern terminus at Ohio state line in Covington, Kentucky. The route is an important crossing of the Appalachian Mountains, and it is covered by three of the corridors of the Appalachian Development Highway System (ADHS). When the highway was originally established in 1926, the route extended from North Augusta, South Carolina, to Port Huron, Michigan. The southern end was extended to its current terminus in 1936, while the northern end was truncated in 1974.

U.S. Route 25W (US 25W) is the western branch of US 25 from Newport, Tennessee, where US 25 splits into US 25E and US 25W, to North Corbin, Kentucky, where the two highways rejoin.

US 25W has been included in the United States Numbered Highway System since the system's inception in 1926.

Interstate 75 (I-75) is a part of the Interstate Highway System that runs 1,786.47 miles (2,875.04 km) from Miami Lakes, Florida to the Canada–United States border at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. In the U.S. state of Kentucky, I-75 runs through the eastern half of the state, from the Tennessee state line near the city of Williamsburg to the Ohio state line near Covington. The Interstate serves the state's second-most populous city, Lexington. Outside of it, the route is mostly rural or suburban in nature, mainly providing access to other cities via state and U.S. Highways. The major landscapes traversed by I-75 include the rolling hills and mountains of the Cumberland Plateau, the flat Bluegrass region, the urban core of Lexington, and the highly urbanized suburbs of Northern Kentucky; it also very briefly crosses through the Eastern Kentucky Coalfield at its southernmost stretch and passes near the Daniel Boone National Forest in London.

Of the six states which I-75 passes through, the segment in Kentucky is the second-shortest, at 191.78 miles (308.64 km) long. I-75 parallels the older U.S. Route 25 (US 25) and U.S. Route 25E (US 25E) corridors for its entire length in Kentucky. The Interstate was part of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, with a section of it from the Ohio River at Covington to an unknown location north of Richmond being the first segment of the Interstate Highway, opened in 1957. Unfinished portions of the highway were eventually completed in increments, with the very last section being opened in 1969. Due to the rapid growth and high traffic volume in the Lexington metropolitan area and Northern Kentucky, many widening projects and renovations have been undertaken on I-75 since then. The Interstate has one auxiliary route, I-275, a beltway encircling Cincinnati.