Many segments of the road offer diverse family-owned and ethnic shopping opportunities and restaurants – particularly Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese, Taiwanese, Japanese, and South Asian, among others.

Kingsway is one of the region's main public transit corridors, with numerous bus routes operating along the road.

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.

[2] The provincial and municipal governments joined forces in 1912 to improve and pave the road,[4] which officially reopened on September 30, 1913 as Kingsway.

[5] During the Great Depression of the 1930s, government make-work projects saw labourers widen Kingsway considerably, so that now it has six lanes along most of its length.