You can think of a thoroughfare as a way you can enter at one end and come out at the other. The point is not what stands along it, but that it lets you pass. Make that picture big and it is the wide road that carries traffic right through a city. Make it small and it is a lane between two buildings that you can squeeze along. Put it on water and it is the channel a boat can slip through. Take it away and you get the board at the end of the lane that reads No Thoroughfare.
From the word’s history
Middle English thurghfare comes from thorough- (an old form of through) plus fare (to go), so the word literally says going through. Old English þurhfaran, to travel through, sits behind the same idea.
中古英語寫作 thurghfare，由 thorough-（等於 through，穿過）加上 fare（走、行進）組成，字面就是「穿過去走」。古英文的 þurhfaran（穿越、走過去）背後是同一個想法，所以「穿過」才是這個字最底層的畫面，「大馬路」是後來長出來的。
Wiktionary entry for thoroughfare, supplied in packet (source_ref kaikki:3f6f69a190036ae4:158770795:22399)
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