Kingsway (Vancouver)

Kingsway is a major thoroughfare that crosses through the Canadian cities of Vancouver and Burnaby, British Columbia. The road runs diagonally from northwest to southeast, emerging from Vancouver's Main Street just south of East 7th Avenue and becoming 12th Street at the Burnaby-New Westminster border.

Kingsway is one of the longest roads in the Metropolitan Vancouver area and is therefore somewhat difficult to characterize. Many segments of the road offer diverse family-owned and ethnic shopping opportunities and restaurants, particularly Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese, Taiwanese, Japanese, South Asian among others. There are also a number of hotels, supermarkets, and freestanding fast-food locations along other portions of its route. The road forms the central commercial spine for Burnaby's Metrotown business district, and is the principal route between Metrotown and Downtown Vancouver.

Kingsway is one of the region's main public transit corridors, with numerous bus routes operating along the road. In addition, the SkyTrain tracks mostly parallel Kingsway from Victoria Drive in Vancouver to Edmonds Street in Burnaby, crossing from the road's north side to its south side east of Boundary Road around Central Park.

Kingsway follows the Indigenous trail used by Canadian and American natives for hundreds of years. When the wagon road was built over it by the Royal Engineers between Vancouver's historic Gastown waterfront and the former capital of the Colony of British Columbia at New Westminster, as recommended by Colonel Richard Moody to facilitate troops movement between the two points. The trail (also known as the False Creek Trail) opened in 1860, and cut diagonally across Burrard Peninsula following its gentlest incline, peaking near Metrotown in Burnaby. The road thus lies at an angle to Vancouver's street grid, which had not yet been laid when the road was first built. As Vancouver became established with a street grid beyond Gastown, the route was named Westminster Road; the stretch of what is now Main Street from 7th Avenue north to the waterfront, seen as a continuation of Westminster Road, was similarly named Westminster Avenue.

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