A roadway is the part of a road designed for vehicles to drive on. When you look at a street, the roadway is the paved section where cars, trucks, and buses actually travel, not the sidewalks or grass strips on the sides.

Understanding the difference matters for safety. If you're riding your bike and the roadway is busy with fast-moving traffic, you might need to use a bike lane or path instead. When crossing a street, you move from the sidewalk, across the roadway, to the other side.

Engineers design roadways carefully, considering how wide they need to be, what materials will last longest, and how to handle rainwater. A narrow neighborhood roadway might be just wide enough for two cars to pass each other, while a highway roadway can have four or more lanes in each direction. The roadway surface itself, whether asphalt or concrete, needs to provide good traction so tires grip properly, even when it's wet.

The word can also describe the entire road system in an area. City planners might talk about maintaining local roadways or improving roadway safety, meaning all the streets and roads combined.