New York State Thruway
The New York State Thruway is a system of controlled-access toll roads spanning within the U.S. state of New York. It is operated by the New York State Thruway Authority, a New York State public-benefit corporation. The mainline is a freeway that extends from the New York City line at Yonkers to the Pennsylvania state line at Ripley by way of I-87 and I-90 through Albany, Syracuse, and Buffalo. According to the International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association, the Thruway is the fifth-busiest toll road in the United States. The toll road is also a major route for long distance travelers linking the cities of Toronto, Buffalo, and Montreal with Boston and New York City.
A tolled highway connecting the major cities of New York was first proposed in 1949. The first section of the Thruway, between Lowell, New York and Rochester, opened on June 24, 1954. The remainder of the mainline was opened in 1955, and many of its spurs connecting to highways in other states and the Canadian province of Ontario were built in the 1950s. In 1957, much of the Thruway system was included as portions of Interstate 87, I-90, and I-95. Other segments became part of I-190 and I-287 shortly afterward. Today, the system comprises six highways: the New York–Ripley mainline, the Berkshire Connector, the Garden State Parkway Connector, the New England Thruway, the Niagara Thruway, and the Cross Westchester Expressway. The portion of I-84 in New York was maintained by the Thruway Authority from 1991 to 2010, but it was never part of the Thruway system and is currently maintained by the New York State Department of Transportation.
The Thruway formerly utilized a combination of closed, and open tolling. From 2016 to 2018, all flat-rate barriers on the Thruway system transitioned to open road tolling, which replaced cash payment with an all-electronic tolling system using E-ZPass and toll by mail. On November 13, 2020, both ticket systems on the Thruway were converted to open road tolling. The Garden State Parkway Connector, the Cross Westchester Expressway and the section of the mainline in and around Buffalo are toll-free. Motorists with E-ZPasses receive a greater discount on the toll-by-mail rate than out-of-state E-ZPass members do. The Thruway is partly subsidized by the tolls, whereas other parts are subsidized by NYSDOT, a 50/50 for the toll-free areas, and cashless/tolled areas.
Route description
The New York State Thruway system is a collection of six individual components across the state of New York that connect the state to four neighboring states as well as the Canadian province of Ontario. Together, the highways extend for, making the Thruway system one of the largest toll highway systems in the United States. The longest of the six components is the mainline. Of the 570 miles in the Thruway system, carries at least one Interstate Highway designation. Only three sections of the system are not part of the Interstate Highway System; these are the Garden State Parkway Connector in Rockland County, a portion of the Berkshire Connector between its western terminus at exit 21A on the mainline near Selkirk and where it joins up with Interstate 90 at exit B1 in Schodack, and a short section of the mainline within exit 24 in Albany that is located between where I-87 departs the roadway and I-90 enters it. They are designated as New York State Route 982L, NY 912M, and NY 915H, respectively, all unsigned reference routes. The speed limit, enforced by the New York State Police, is 65 miles per hour along most of the Thruway. The main exceptions to this are in the suburbs and city of Buffalo and in Westchester and Rockland counties. There, the speed limit is 55 miles per hour.I-90, which comprises the bulk of the mainline and the Berkshire Connector, runs for along the Thruway: as part of the Berkshire Connector and on the mainline. I-87 comprises the remaining of the mainline, including an concurrency with I-287 north of New York City. I-287 covers another , while I-190 spans and I-95 covers.
All highways maintained by the New York State Thruway Authority lack the reference markers that exist on all New York State Department of Transportation-maintained roads, as would be expected. In their place, NYSTA-controlled roadways use small, square tenth-mile markers with a white background and blue numbering. These markers differ from the white-on-green reference markers used by NYSDOT on state-maintained highways, which are high and wide and display a limited amount of mileage information on their third row.
Mainline
South of Albany
The mainline of the Thruway begins as a continuation of the Major Deegan Expressway, carrying I-87 northward into Westchester County from New York City at the border between Yonkers and the Bronx. The first few exits serve various local streets and destinations in the city. At exit 4, I-87 connects to the Cross County Parkway, an east-west parkway providing access to the Saw Mill River, Bronx River, and Hutchinson River parkways, all of which run parallel to the Thruway through Yonkers. The Hutchinson River and Bronx River parkways leave to the northeast midway through Yonkers, while the Saw Mill and Sprain Brook parkways follow the Thruway out of the city. Exit 5 connects to Central Park Avenue which connects towards White Plains. After that, exit 6 connects to Tuckahoe Road, connecting towards Yonkers and Bronxville. The last free exit heading northbound is exit 6A; travel farther north requires a toll payment at the Yonkers toll gantry.After the toll, the thruway continues to exit 7, which grants access to Ardsley and Saw Mill River Road. All three highways take generally parallel tracks to Elmsford, where I-87 directly intersects the Saw Mill River Parkway at exit 7A. Not far to the north is exit 8, a semi-directional T interchange with I-287. I-287 joins the Thruway here, following I-87 west across the Hudson River into Rockland County on the Tappan Zee Bridge. I-87 and I-287 remain overlapped for through the densely populated southern portion of Rockland County, meeting the Palisades Interstate Parkway and the Garden State Parkway Connector, the latter of which provides access to the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey. The Thruway continues generally westward to Suffern, where I-87 and I-287 split at a large semi-directional T interchange near the New Jersey border. At this point, I-287 heads south into New Jersey while I-87 and the Thruway turn northward into the valley of the Ramapo River. NY 17 northbound briefly joins the Thruway at the interchange with I-287 in Suffern, and leaves the Thruway a half-mile north at exit 15A in Hillburn.
The Thruway continues north through the river valley toward Harriman, where it encounters the Woodbury toll gantry, the southeastern end of the mainline's major closed toll system. The gantry is located on the mainline within exit 16, a trumpet interchange. Along with the mainline gantry in Harriman, a toll gantry exists on future I-86 midway between the Thruway and NY 17. Now a completely tolled highway, the Thruway heads northward, roughly paralleling the Hudson River to the river's west as it serves the city of Newburgh, the village of New Paltz, and the city of Kingston, connecting to the short I-587 in the latter.
Past Kingston, the highway runs closer to the river as it parallels U.S. Route 9W through the towns of Saugerties, Catskill, Coxsackie, and Ravena. Just north of Ravena, the Thruway meets the west end of the Berkshire Connector, a spur linking the Thruway mainline to the Massachusetts Turnpike to the east. The highway continues into Albany, where it connects to Troy via I-787 at exit 23 and intersects I-90 at exit 24. The latter of the two junctions is the busiest of the Thruway's exits, serving an estimated 27 million vehicles a year. I-87 leaves the Thruway mainline here, and the Thruway briefly becomes the unsigned reference route NY 915H, before I-90 merges into it, following the Thruway northwestward toward Schenectady.
Albany to Syracuse
South of Schenectady, but still in Albany County, the Thruway and I-90 meet I-890, a loop route of I-90 that directly serves the downtown district of Schenectady, at exit 25. The Thruway, meanwhile, bypasses the city to the south and west, intersecting I-88 at exit 25A in Rotterdam before reuniting with I-890 at exit 26 west of Scotia. Travel between I-88 and exits 24, 25, and 26 in either direction is toll-free. From exit 26 west to Utica, the mainline of the Thruway parallels the Erie Canal and the Mohawk River, crossing over the water-bodies at Mohawk. In between Schenectady and Utica, I-90 and the Thruway serve several riverside communities, including the cities of Amsterdam and Little Falls and the villages of Fonda, Canajoharie, and Herkimer.Like Schenectady before it, the Thruway bypasses downtown Utica, following an alignment north of the city while I-790 serves it directly. I-790 breaks from the Thruway at exit 31 and runs along two carriageways flanking the mainline on both sides for before turning southward onto the North-South Arterial. The adjacent highways become NY 49, which parallels the Thruway for another northwestward. At the end of this stretch, the Thruway turns slightly southwestward, crossing over the Mohawk River and the Erie Canal while NY 49 continues northwestward along the northern bank of the water-bodies toward Rome. On the other side of the river, the Thruway curves back to the west, proceeding to exit 32 in Westmoreland.
Not far to the west, the Thruway has a junction with NY 365 at exit 33 in Verona. Here, the Thruway connects to the cities of Rome and Oneida and serves the Turning Stone Resort & Casino via NY 365. The highway continues onward through a sparsely populated area between Verona and Syracuse, passing roughly south of Oneida Lake as it connects to the village of Canastota by way of NY 13 at exit 34. As the highway approaches exit 34A outside of Syracuse, the surroundings become more developed. The level of development rises sharply west of I-481 as the Thruway enters Salina, a northern suburb of Syracuse. Within Salina, I-90 and the Thruway intersect I-81, which connects the Thruway to both downtown Syracuse and Syracuse Hancock International Airport.