New York State Route 878

Northern segment , concurrent with NY 27. The northwest section in Queens is mostly built to freeway standards, except for a traffic light at the eastern end of the highway. It lies along the north edge of JFK Airport, just south of the Belt Parkway and Conduit Avenue (NY 27). Officially NY 878 starts at the interchange between the Belt Parkway, Conduit Avenue (NY 27) and Cross Bay Boulevard, and it stretches east to the intersection of Rockaway and Farmers Boulevards. The eastbound freeway does begin in the median of Conduit Avenue just west of Cross Bay Boulevard, but it carries NY 27 until the highways split at a point between the IND Rockaway Line underpass and Lefferts Boulevard. The separate NY 878 begins at that split, but the route only carries eastbound one-way traffic until it reaches the junction with I-678 (Van Wyck Expressway). There it becomes a two-way freeway. NY 878 continues east past the JFK Expressway, and becomes an expressway at a traffic light at North Hangar Road. NY 878 ends soon after at Rockaway Boulevard and Farmers Boulevard. This makes I-878 the shortest three-digit Interstate Route and the shortest Interstate Highway in the Interstate Highway System. This section of NY 878 only has route designations for the eastbound lanes. The entire segment, including the unsigned I-878, is maintained by the NYSDOT. The part of Rockaway Turnpike that connects to NY 878 is maintained by Nassau County. Southern segment The southeast section of NY 878 is an at-grade expressway, with only two bridges grade-separating the highway from intersecting routes – over the Far Rockaway Branch of the Long Island Rail Road, and under Seagirt Boulevard at a trumpet interchange. Signage for NY 878 can be seen from the split with Rockaway Turnpike south to the toll plaza of the Atlantic Beach Bridge in Lawrence. The segment from Rockaway Turnpike to Burnside Avenue is maintained by the highway. The southern section of NY 878 has no connections to other state routes. ==History==

Predecessors and planning The portion of Rockaway Boulevard and Turnpike between NY 27 and the Atlantic Beach Bridge was originally designated as New York State Route 104 by 1931. However, this designation was removed by 1932. The expressway was first proposed in late 1945, to connect Brooklyn with southeastern Queens and the South Shore of Long Island, as well as to provide a link to Idlewild (now JFK) Airport. It was among several highways planned jointly between Robert Moses' Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority (TBTA), and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. By 1949, the Nassau Expressway was planned along with a replacement for the original Atlantic Beach Bridge. It was envisioned by Moses and Nassau County executive J. Russell Sprague as a vital link between Atlantic Beach, the Belt Parkway system, and the Bronx–Whitestone Bridge. A contract for preliminary engineering work was awarded that year. As originally proposed, the highway would have only extended from the interchange with Van Wyck Expressway and Belt Parkway to the Atlantic Beach Bridge. This route was favored as a replacement to Rockaway Boulevard/Turnpike, which was viewed as inadequate and congested. A map of the expressway was presented to the Nassau residents in 1951. Three years later, the state made the first land acquisitions for the Nassau segment of the expressway. The Nassau Expressway was proposed alongside the never-built Long Beach Expressway. The Long Beach Expressway would have extended east past the Atlantic Beach Bridge along the South Shore to Long Beach and Lido Beach, ending at a junction with the Loop Parkway leading to Jones Beach and the Meadowbrook State Parkway. The Nassau Expressway was mapped as part of the Interstate Highway System in 1961. The small community of Meyers Harbor, located in the Hook Creek wetlands east of the modern Five Towns Shopping Center, was condemned and destroyed to provide a path for the expressway. Many homes in Inwood were either condemned and demolished or relocated in order to facilitate the expressway. and work began in 1965. or 1971. In addition, residents opposed this segment of the highway. As with the canceled Long Beach Expressway it would have created a "Chinese wall" between communities in Nassau County. By that time, less than a quarter of the proposed $51.8 million, highway had been completed. The only section open at the time, the eastbound freeway west of JFK Airport, had been built at a cost of $18 million. However, a 1971 New York Times article mentioned that the freeway between the Van Wyck Expressway and 150th Street was already open. At the time, the entire highway from Queens to Nassau was planned for completion in 1981. By around late 1973, work on the project restarted. Builders sought funds from the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1973 to pay for construction. At that time, plans called for the completion of the highway's westbound lanes west of 150th Street, as well as the sections of the freeway along Rockaway Boulevard and in Nassau County. Rockaway Boulevard would have also been relocated and modernized. However, the federal government refused to approve the funding, and the money was instead distributed among projects in Arkansas, Indiana, and Fort Worth, Texas. This further delayed the construction of the Nassau Expressway. By then, the unbuilt segment in Nassau was called the "phantom expressway" because it had been in the planning stages for decades. Three years later, the NYSDOT published plans for the segment of the expressway that would be built in Nassau. Work on the expressway project was to begin in 1998. However, by the 1990s, the project had not commenced, even though the new expressway would have relieved congestion on the parallel Belt Parkway. Construction was delayed indefinitely in 1995 due to a lack of funds due to the early-1990s recession, as well as a general decline in horse racing at the Aqueduct Racetrack, which obviated the need for the westbound freeway in Queens. In October 2014, Nassau County Legislator Howard Kopel (representing Lawrence) and New York State Assemblyman Phil Goldfeder (representing Howard Beach, Broad Channel, and the Rockaways) advocated for the completion of the entire Nassau Expressway, in order to alleviate traffic on Rockaway Boulevard and Rockaway Turnpike, and to provide an evacuation route in the event of a natural disaster. Designation history , including the Bushwick Expressway, Nassau Expressway, and Clearview Expressway extension From circa 1959 until 1970, the I-878 designation was used for a section of what is now I-278 (Bruckner Expressway) between Sheridan Boulevard (formerly the Sheridan Expressway) and the Cross Bronx Expressway (I-95) in the Bronx. The one-way eastbound section of the Nassau Expressway from Cross Bay Boulevard to the Van Wyck Expressway was built in 1967, when the highway was still part of I-78. At the time, the portion of the Nassau Expressway from Meadow Causeway to the Seagirt Boulevard interchange was maintained by Nassau County The NY 900V designation, now redundant to NY 878, was removed by October 2007. ==Exit list==

Exit numbers on NY 878's northern segment are only posted in the eastbound direction. There are no exit numbers for the westbound lanes. {{NYint|exit ==References==