According to the
New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT), NY 324 begins at
NY 384 in eastern
Niagara Falls. NY 324 heads south,
overlapping with
I-190 (the Niagara Section of the
New York State Thruway) across the
North Grand Island Bridge to
Grand Island, where it leaves the expressway at exit 20. However, as signed, NY 324 begins at the north end of Grand Island, where it splits off from the Interstate Highway as Grand Island Boulevard. South of exit 20, the official and signed routings are identical. Maintenance of the route is split between NYSDOT, the
New York State Thruway Authority (NYSTA), and
Erie County. All but the northernmost of the portion of the route that overlaps with I-190 is maintained by NYSTA. The two county-maintained sections extend from exit 20B to Grand Island Boulevard on Grand Island and from exit 15 to Grand Island Boulevard in
Town of Tonawanda, where NY 324 utilizes small portions of the county-owned Long Road and Kenmore Avenue, respectively. The remainder of NY 324 is maintained by NYSDOT. From I-190 exit 20, NY 324 runs in a more southeasterly direction, serving as the main commercial strip on Grand Island, before it
overlaps I-190 in order to cross the
Niagara River. Once on the mainland, the structure of exits on I-190 allows only the westbound portion of NY 325 to use Grand Island Boulevard west of I-190's exit 15, following Grand Island Boulevard past the exit to an intersection with NY 266, then turning right to follow it to exit 17 to merge with I-190. The eastbound route of NY 324 is unable to do so; instead, it parts company with the Interstate Highway on the other side of the river at exit 15, where it turns north to parallel I-190 on Kenmore Avenue. The eastbound portion of Grand Island Boulevard on this stretch is maintained as reference route 950C. After , it veers east onto the Town of Tonawanda's portion of Grand Island Boulevard for to a junction with Sheridan Drive. The latter carries NY 325, a route that begins at
NY 266 on the banks of the Niagara and passes through a commercial and industrial area of the Town of Tonawanda. NY 324 takes on the Sheridan Drive name here and assumes a more due easterly course across northern Erie County. Though the street is signed as a state highway on both NY 324 and NY 325, most residents simply refer to this road by its local name. Through much of this portion, the road is divided, with a tree-lined
median strip. Businesses, both local and national, line both sides of the road and traffic is heavy. It crosses some other major strips such as Niagara Falls Boulevard (
U.S. Route 62 or US 62), a major contributor to traffic on Sheridan due to the proximity of the
Boulevard Mall, and Millersport Highway (
NY 263), which feeds the Amherst campus of the
University at Buffalo. In
Amherst it meets the Youngmann Expressway (
I-290) where
NY 240 (Harlem Road), reaches its northern end. Past the Youngmann development abates, green returns to the roadside and the median ends, although the road remains four-lane and high-volume. There is another pocket of development around the
Wegmans supermarket north of
Williamsville, which has seen some rapid growth in the last few years. NY 324 crosses its last major route, Transit Road (
NY 78), on an overpass just north of the once-thriving
Eastern Hills Mall, which had been the premier mall in the Buffalo area until it began losing tenants and customers to the larger
Walden Galleria in
Cheektowaga. Beyond Transit, the road is still four-lane but primarily residential as it enters the
Town of Clarence. After Harris Hill Road, the highway bends to the southeast once again for a final mile into its eastern end at Main Street (NY 5). This last section was widened from two lanes to four in the mid-1990s, and has seen some development but still remains lightly trafficked most of the day. ==History==