page_title: Interstate 87 (New York)
section_title: New York State Thruway
hierarchical_section_title: Interstate 87 (New York) / Route description / South of Albany / New York State Thruway
caption_attribution_description: New York State Thruway (I-87/I-287) looking east from Nordkop Mtn in Suffern, NY
context_page_description: Interstate 87 is a 333.49-mile-long north–south intrastate Interstate Highway located within the U.S. state of New York, and is most of the main highway between New York City and Montreal. The highway begins at exit 47 off I-278 in the New York City borough of the Bronx, just north of the Triborough Bridge and Grand Central Parkway. From there, the route runs northward through the Hudson Valley, the Capital District, and the easternmost part of the North Country to the Canadian border in the Town of Champlain. At its north end, I-87 continues into Quebec as Autoroute 15. I-87 connects with several regionally important roads: I-95 in New York City, New York State Route 17 near Harriman, I-84 near Newburgh, and I-90 in Albany. The route is the longest intrastate Interstate Highway in the Interstate Highway System. The highway is not contiguous with I-87 in North Carolina.
  I-87 was assigned in 1957 as part of the establishment of the Interstate Highway System.
context_section_description: At the New York City–Yonkers border, I-87 changes to the New York State Thruway as the mainline proceeds northward through Yonkers and southern Westchester County. It connects with Central Park Avenue (NY 100) at exit 1, the first of 12 exits within the county. The first few exits serve various local streets, with exit 2 providing access to Yonkers Raceway and exit 3 serving the Cross County Shopping Center. 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. The north-south parkways and I-95 run parallel to the Thruway through Southern Westchester. The Bronx River parkway leaves to the northeast midway through Yonkers, while the Saw Mill and Sprain Brook parkways follow the Thruway out of the city.
  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 (the Cross-Westchester Expressway). 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 15 miles (24 km) through the densely populated southern portion of Rockland County, meeting the Palisades Interstate Parkway and the Garden State Parkway Connector, with the latter providing 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 (exit 15) only about a half mile from 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.
  The Thruway continues north as a six lane tollway through the river valley toward Harriman, where it encounters the Woodbury toll barrier, the southeastern end of the mainline's major closed ticket system. The barrier is located on the mainline within exit 16 (NY 17), a trumpet interchange. Along with the mainline barrier in Harriman, an electronic toll gantry exists on the exit 16 ramp midway between the Thruway and NY 17 exit 131 (NY 32). Now a completely tolled highway, the Thruway heads northward as it narrows to four lanes, 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, indirectly 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 (US 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 25 miles (40 km) to the east. The highway continues into the vicinity of 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 then widens to six lanes and runs across the capital city's residential suburbs for 6 miles (9.7 km) to exit 24, a complex interchange with I-90. At this point, I-87 leaves the Thruway to access the nearby south end of the toll-free Adirondack Northway, also known simply as the Northway, while I-90 merges in from the east to follow the Thruway toward Buffalo
  and then Pennsylvania.
caption: Looking east along I-87/I-287 (the NYS Thruway) toward the Tappan Zee Bridge from Nordkop Mountain in Suffern
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