Long Island Expressway
Queens Midtown Tunnel to Queens Boulevard)
The Long Island Expressway was not built by one plan, but followed the course of existing roads to build a major highway designed to ease traffic in the Long Island counties. The first segment of what would eventually become the Long Island Expressway opened in 1940, and started at the equally new Queens-Midtown Tunnel. By the 1960s the Long Island Expressway would be the major artery feeding into New York City from Nassau and Suffolk Counties, and into Manhattan from Queens.
After World War II (1939-1945), the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority (TBTA), a brainchild of Robert Moses (1888-1981) responsible for building and maintaining bridges and tunnels in the city, planned to bring the then short road all the way to the city limits. Moses held a number of city positions, notably as head of the TBTA, and was instrumental in building 416 miles of highways and 11 bridges including the Triborough Bridge, the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. The first part of this plan for the new highway was the extension of the Queens-Midtown Expressway (as it was then known) to Queens Boulevard. It then linked up with the existing Horace Harding Boulevard, running east to the Nassau county line.
Once this was completed, the TBTA proposed a six-lane Central Motorway to run from Manhattan to the eastern end of Long Island. Robert Moses saw this proposed highway as the only way to improve traffic conditions that were rapidly worsening due to population growth on Long Island. Furthermore, Moses thought the highway was the only way to facilitate commercial growth on Long Island, which was still a largely rural place. The existing parkways were restricted to passenger vehicles, and new routes were necessary for commercial vehicle access.
In 1954, Governor Thomas E. Dewey (1902-1971) approved the construction plan for the large highway joining Manhattan to the east of Long Island, at a cost of $500 million. The highway was originally designed for a daily capacity of 80,000 vehicles. By 1958 construction on both the Horace Harding Expressway, already commonly referred to as the Long Island Expressway and the first section of the Expressway in Nassau County was completed. In 1962 the Expressway reached the border between Nassau and Suffolk counties, and on June 28, 1972, the Long Island Expressway reached Riverhead.
Afflicted from the beginning with serious traffic problems, the 70.8 mile Long Island Expressway has seen a series of concerted efforts to ease the traffic. Minimum and maximum speeds, park and rides, bus lanes and streetlights have all been added in the last 30 years. These efforts notwithstanding, the Long Island Expressway remains the major road into New York City from its most populated suburbs, and certain sections see more than 200,000 vehicles pass by daily.
Wednesday, Feb 20, 2002