and Waterloo. The route, which forms the rough shape of a backwards "L", serves as the backbone of the two cities. As the concurrency of Highway7 and Highway8 enters the city of Kitchener as a freeway from the west, it takes on the name Conestoga Parkway at the Waterloo Regional Road 70 (Trussler Road) exit at the western edge of the city. The parkway travels east until Highway8 diverges southeast toward Cambridge. Now carrying only the Highway7 designation, the Conestoga Parkway curves northward. At the Frederick Street and Victoria Street interchange, Highway7 exits the parkway and follows Victoria Street east toward Guelph; the parkway henceforth is signed as Highway85 to its northern end, which lies approximately north of the Waterloo city limits. The Conestoga Parkway is maintained by the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario (MTO), which officially refers to it as the Kitchener–Waterloo Expressway. The speed limit on the parkway is throughout its length. Western leg At the Kitchener city limits at Trussler Road the concurrency of Highway7/8 continues west as a four lane freeway towards Stratford. Within Kitchener, the Conestoga Parkway consistently acts as the boundary for neighbourhoods to either side of it. Initially, it is sandwiched between the suburban residential neighbourhoods of Forest Heights and Laurentian West neighbourhoods, to the north and south respectively, as it travels east to Regional Road58 (Fischer–Hallman Road). There the median switches from grass to a concrete barrier, and the parkway widens to six lanes. It passes north of the Sunrise Shopping Centre before once again bisecting residential neighbourhoods, namely Forest Hill and Meinzinger Park to the north and Laurentian Hills to the south. Approaching the Regional Road28 (Homer Watson Boulevard) interchange – which provides access to Regional Road 4 (Ottawa Street) – retail and light industry in the Alpine neighbourhood begin to flank the southern side of the Conestoga Parkway. It then crosses over the Canadian National Railways Huron Park spur, the adjacent ION LRT line, and Schneider Creek immediately west of an interchange with Regional Road53 (Courtland Avenue). Now serving as the boundary between the residential neighbourhoods of Rockway to the north and Vanier to the south, the route curves north-northeast to reach an interchange with the Freeport Diversion (also known as the King Street Bypass or Highway8 expressway). Northern leg The portion of the Conestoga Parkway that travels perpendicular to King Street East follows alongside Montgomery Creek. Now eight-lanes wide,