Interstate 495 (New York)

Interstate 495 (abbreviated I-495) runs 66.38 miles (106.8 km) entirely within New York state, from the Queens-Midtown Tunnel in New York City to Riverhead, New York, through the counties of Queens, Nassau, and Suffolk, ending just before the "fish-tail" separation of the North and South Forks of eastern Long Island. I-495 is also known the Long Island Expressway, which is often abbreviated as LIE.

The LIE was constructed in stages starting in 1939, when the Queens Midtown Tunnel was built, until 1972, when its Riverhead terminus was finished. Plans have existed to extend the LIE across the Long Island Sound to either Guilford, Connecticut or Rhode Island via a series of man-made islands, but lack of funding and public opposition have killed these proposals.

In 1994, an HOV lane was added in each direction from Deer Park to (near) Hicksville. Construction to extend the lane to the border of Queens and Nassau Counties was finished on June 30, 2005.

Smaller highways continue on from the end of the LIE to Greenport on the North Fork and past the Hamptons to Montauk on the South Fork. Cynics have suggested that the acronym "LIE" is appropriate since, due to the high volume of traffic on the LIE, the term "expressway" is a lie.

Length

66.38 miles

• New York: 66.38 miles
• TOTAL: 66.38 miles

Major cities along the route

• New York City, New York

Intersections with other interstates

• Interstate 278 in Queens, New York
• I-295 in Queens, New York
• Interstate 678 in Queens, New York (Van Wyck Expressway/Whitestone Expressway)

Parent route

• Interstate 95

Notes

Originally, I-495 was to stretch from the Queens Midtown Tunnel and I-278 to I-295, the Clearview Expressway. Plans later included creating the Mid-Manhattan Expressway across Manhattan to the Lincoln Tunnel, to connect to I-95 in New Jersey. These plans were eventually cancelled, and the NJ stretch of I-495 was downgraded to a NJ state highway. However, Long Island lobbied to extend I-495 east, upgrading NY 24 to NY 495 and then I-495, to Riverhead where it terminates at NY 25. Since I-495 extends from a city outward, it is technically a spur, which should have an odd first digit. Even first digits are usually assigned to bypasses and beltways. A proposed Orient Point-Watch Hill Bridge would have connected I-495 back to I-95 in Rhode Island.

The LIE has often been termed the "World's Longest Parking Lot" due to its notoriously bad traffic jams; however, that title is now somewhat erroneous. Many Long Island residents admit, thanks in part to recently finished construction of an HOV lane stretching from the Queens border to Exit 64, that the LIE tends to move better than the island's east-west parkways, the Northern State Parkway and the Southern State Parkway.

The oldest tree in the New York metropolitan area, called the Queens Giant, is very close to the Long Island Expressway in Northeastern Queens, New York (near the Douglaston Plaza Mall). If a person knows where to look, he/she can see the Queens Giant in the distance for a few seconds while driving west on the Long Island Expressway in northeastern Queens. The Queens Giant is also the tallest tree in the NY metro area.

External links

• nycroads.com LIE info. (7/04)