State Route 202, or Loop 202, (spoken as two-oh-two) is the beltway encompassing the eastern Phoenix, Arizona, United States Metropolitan area. It navigates and surrounds the cities of Tempe, Mesa, Chandler, and Gilbert, making it very vital to the area freeway system. It currently begins at the Mini Stack interchange with Interstate 10 (I-10) and State Route 51 (SR 51), and ends at I-10 near Ahwatukee.

When fully complete, plans call for Loop 202 to consist of three sections. Two of these sections, the Red Mountain Freeway and the Santan Freeway, have been fully completed.

The first section of Loop 202 to open was the Red Mountain Freeway. It runs from the I-10/SR 51 Mini Stack interchange to US Route 60 (US 60), and passes over the Salt River and through Tempe and Mesa en route, with an interchange with Loop 101 in Tempe. The final segment of the freeway from Power Road to University Drive opened on July 21, 2008. This opening marked the completion of the original Regional Freeway System as approved by Maricopa County voters in 1985 by Proposition 300.

In 2006, this portion of Loop 202 was used to portray a Saudi Arabian superhighway in the 2007 film, The Kingdom. Filming also took place at Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport and the Arizona State University Polytechnic Campus. The city of Mesa received $40,000 for the usage of the freeway from NBC Universal.

As of October 2012, HOV lanes on the Red Mountain section run from I-10/SR 51 to Gilbert Road. HOV lanes are planned to extend to US 60 in Mesa, eventually tying into planned HOV lanes on the Santan Freeway.

Completed in 2006, the Santan Freeway serves the southeast valley cities of Chandler, Gilbert, and Mesa and provides access to Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport. Beginning at the SuperRedTan interchange with US 60 in Mesa, the freeway runs south and turns westward in Gilbert near the airport. A few miles later the Santan is running in Chandler, where it has a junction with Loop 101 in the vicinity of the Chandler Fashion Center. Following this interchange, the Santan Freeway section of Loop 202 encounters its terminus at a stack interchange with I-10 near Ahwatukee.

The Santan section has HOV lanes between I-10/Pecos Rd and Gilbert Rd. Future plans call for HOV lanes to extend to US 60 and planned HOV lanes on the Red Mountain section.

The third, yet unbuilt and most controversial segment of the Loop 202 partial beltway is the South Mountain Freeway. Construction has been continuously delayed due to ongoing tension between three separate groups: regional transportation planners, who insist that the freeway is necessary to ensure smooth traffic flow in the coming decades; residents of the adjacent Ahwatukee community, who could lose 120 homes to eminent domain depending on the road's final alignment; and leaders and residents of the adjoining Gila River Indian Community (GRIC), who have oscillated between opposing and supporting the freeway in recent years.

The South Mountain Freeway has two distinct segments: the "eastern segment" that straddles the Ahwatukee-GRIC border, and the "western segment" that will parallel 59th Avenue through the southwest Phoenix community of Laveen. Together, these segments would form a 21.9-mile bypass around Downtown Phoenix, linking the metropolitan area's southwestern and southeastern suburbs. The freeway as currently envisioned would begin at the existing four-level symmetrical stack interchange between I-10 and the Santan Freeway on the Chandler-Ahwatukee border and terminate at I-10 and 59th Avenue west of Downtown Phoenix.

The specific alignment of the freeway has been revised repeatedly since 1985, when Maricopa County voters originally approved its construction as part of the regional highway network envisioned under Proposition 300. In 1988, the Maricopa Association of Governments (MAG), the region's transportation planning agency, suggested an alignment of the freeway's western segment along 55th Avenue and an alignment of the eastern segment along Pecos Road. A federal study in 2001 required ADOT to reexamine those suggestions, and the task of recommending the final alignment fell to a Citizen's Advisory Team formed in 2002. In April 2006, that panel released their final recommendations to route the western portion of the freeway four miles further west to connect with Loop 101, and to reject the proposed alignment of the eastern portion along Pecos Road, suggesting that the latter be built on GRIC land instead. Two months later, ADOT overruled the panel's suggestion for the western segment and opted for the current 59th Avenue alignment instead.

In February 2012, a non-binding referendum was held in the Gila River Indian Community on whether the eastern portion of the freeway should be built on Community land several miles south of Pecos Road. Options in the referendum were to build on Community land, off Community land, or not at all. The "no build" option won a plurality of votes, receiving 720 votes out of a total 1,481 cast. MAG sent out a press release soon after making it clear that construction of the freeway would move forward as planned along the Pecos Road alignment. Expecting this outcome, MAG and ADOT had previously (in 2010) shrunk the freeway's footprint from 10 lanes to eight in order to minimize its impact on Ahwatukee. Fearing the worst possible outcome of the freeway being built without exits onto Community land (as would be the case with the Pecos Road alignment), GRIC residents quickly formulated plans for a new referendum that would exclude the "no build" option, leaving only "yes on Gila River or no on Gila River." As of early October 2012, the group organizing the new referendum had collected and submitted 1,517 signatures to the tribal government. In the meantime, the $1.9-billion freeway is scheduled to start construction between 2014 and 2015.

The entire route is in Maricopa County.

Arizona Spur 202 is an unsigned state highway located in Phoenix. It begins at Red Mountain Freeway (Loop 202) at exit 5. It continues west, intersecting the Hohokam Expressway (SR 143) and ends at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. This is an unsigned route, marked by westbound exit signs from Loop 202 as Sky Harbor Boulevard. The spur route was commissioned in 1993.[citation needed]