| I-95 | |||
| Get started | New York | ||
| End | Port Chester | ||
| Length | 24 mi | ||
| Length | 38 km | ||
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Interstate 95 or I -95 is an Interstate Highway in the U.S. state of New York. I-95 runs through New York City and the northern suburbs, the entire route runs through urban areas. The highway crosses the George Washington Bridge and then forms the Trans-Manhattan Expressway. The highway is also known as the Cross-Bronx Expressway and in the suburbs as the New England Thruway. I-95 is 38 kilometers long in New York State.
Travel directions
see also Trans-Manhattan Expressway, Cross-Bronx Expressway, and New England Thruway.
The Cross Bronx Expressway.
Immediately after the George Washington Bridge is an interchange with State Route 9, the Henry Hudson Parkway, a highway along the west side of Manhattan. This is a complicated spaghetti junction. Immediately after this, the highway dips below ground level, passing under the Washington Bridge Bus terminal. This section is called the Trans Manhattan Expressway and runs through the Washington Heights neighborhood. One passes a number of important streets such as Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue. On top of Interstate 95 are a number of very high apartment towers, 4 in total. Here the road has 12 lanes. The section through Manhattan is barely a mile long, and one crosses Harlem River Drive at the end of the island, a highway that runs along the east side of Manhattan. Manhattan is quite elongated, to the south side of the center it is at least 18 kilometers.
Cross the Harlem River via the Alexander Hamilton Bridge and immediately cross Interstate 87, the connection between New York and Montreal in Canada. The highway has only 2×3 lanes here, and there is no room to expand. One again crosses a number of major streets such as Jerome Avenue and Grand Boulevard. After driving a few miles through the Bronx, one crosses Interstate 895, a very short link highway to Interstate 278, which leads to Queens and Brooklyn. Almost immediately after this one crosses the Bronx River Parkway. One passes again along a number of important streets such as White Plains Road and Westchester Avenue. Not much further you come to a complicated junction where 5 highways come together. From the west, I-278 merges, south to Queens and John F. Kennedy Airport, Interstate 678, and southeast, Interstate 295, to Queens, and the endless sea of suburbs on Long Island. The Hutchinson River Parkway then continues to the north.
A little further on, Interstate 695 merges into the Throgs Neck Expressway, which runs to I-295. So this is a short connecting highway. Interstate 95 turns north here, beginning its route through New York’s endless residential and suburban neighborhoods. The highway again crosses the Hutchinson River Parkway, passing the Co-Op City neighborhood, a type of planned high-rise residential area in the Bronx. At Eastchester, it again crosses the Hutchinson River Parkway, continuing north towards Mount Vernon and White Plains. The largest suburb on the route is New Rochelle, with a population of 72,000. This is where New York’s more expensive suburbs begin. A toll station follows on the east side of this city. You only have to pay toll here once. The highway here runs not far from Long Island Sound, part of the Atlantic Ocean that separates Long Island from mainland New York and Connecticut.
According to Topschoolsintheusa, the suburbs here are in the woods and consist of detached houses. South of Port Chester, Interstate 287 ends at I-95. This highway passes north and west of the metropolitan area, but is significantly longer than Interstate 95. Port Chester is the last place before the Connecticut border. Here the residential areas merge unnoticed into the residential areas of Greenwich in Connecticut.
History
The Trans-Manhattan Expressway.
I-95 was developed from Robert Moses ‘ road plans, through the construction of four separate highways, the Trans-Manhattan Expressway, the Cross-Bronx Expressway, the Bruckner Expressway, and the New England Thruway. The oldest part of I-95 today is the monumental George Washington Bridge over the Hudson River on the New Jersey state border, which opened in 1931. Construction began on the Cross-Bronx Expressway in 1948, which was largely sunk. The first part opened in 1955, but it took a relatively long time before the entire Cross-Bronx Expressway was opened, because the chosen route necessitated the large-scale demolition of apartment complexes. In 1963, the Cross-Bronx Expressway was completed.
The section through Manhattan has been developed as the Trans-Manhattan Expressway. It replaces the 1940s 178th-179th Street Tunnels that connected to Harlem River Drive. This highway was opened in 1962, shortly afterwards on January 15, 1963, the Alexander Hamilton Bridge over the Harlem River opened, which allowed the connection to the Cross-Bronx Expressway that was also opened at the time. In the 1960s, the George Washington Bridge Bus Station and four tower blocks were built atop the Trans-Manhattan Expressway.
The New England Thruway was developed in the 1950s, opening in one go on October 15, 1958, between the Pelham Parkway in the Bronx and the Connecticut border. In 1961, the easternmost section of the Bruckner Expressway opened as an extension of the New York State Thruway. The missing section was then a 1.5-kilometer sunken section between the huge Bruckner Interchange and I-695. This section could already be avoided by taking the Hutchinson River Parkway and was finally opened in 1967, completing I-95 through New York.
I-95 in New York has always been one of the few roads that had exit numbering by distance in New York State. Due to the high density of exits, it is possible that at exit 3 one has already had 10 exits.
Between 2018 and 2021, the last mile of I-95 between I-287 and the Connecticut border was reconstructed. The interchange with I-287 has been renovated and the highway redesigned. It was the final phase of a long-term project to upgrade 14 miles of I-95 between The Bronx and the Connecticut border.
Opening history
| from | nasty | length | date |
| George Washington Bridge | 1 km | 24-10-1931 | |
| Bronx River Parkway | 2.5 km | 05-11-1955 | |
| Boston Road (temporary) | Bronx River Parkway | 1.5 km | 23-04-1956 |
| Pelham Parkway | Connecticut state line | 23.5 km | 15-10-1958 |
| Webster Avenue | Boston Road (temporary) | 2.0 km | 27-04-1960 |
| Jerome Avenue | Webster Avenue | 1.0 km | 10-02-1961 |
| Pelham Parkway | 2.5 km | 00-00-1961 | |
| Henry Hudson Parkway | 2 km | 00-00-1962 | |
| Harlem River Drive | Jerome Avenue | 1.5 km | 15-01-1963 |
| 1.4 km | 00-00-1967 |
Traffic intensities
The George Washington Bridge.
I-95 is extremely busy, with nearly 300,000 vehicles per day on the double-deck George Washington Bridge, and 250,000 vehicles per day further through Manhattan. 181,000 vehicles drive daily on the Alexander Hamilton Bridge to Bronx, which is less than in the 1990s. On the Cross Bronx Expressway, 145,000 vehicles travel on the 2×3 section.
Lane Configuration
| From | Unpleasant | Lanes |
| exit 0 | Exit 1C (I-87) | 4×3 |
| Exit 1C (I-87) | Exit 7 (I-695) | 2×3 |
| Exit 7 (I-695) | Exit 9 | 2×4 |
| Exit 9 | Exit 23 | 2×3 |
