You gotta wonder why the Northway needs 3 lanes from Albany to Lake George but the Thruway has only 2 north of Harriman. Maybe they lose the ability to collect tolls if they take federal money to add a lane?
Adding more lanes does not necessarily cut down on traffic and there is a lot of evidence to support it may actually do the opposite. The NY-State Thruway could take a lesson from the NJ Turnpike perhaps, though in the context of Orange and Rockland Counties I'm not sure something similar would work. RT6 and the Palisades Interstate Parkway also see pretty extreme congestion north of 287. Maybe old 17 out of Tuxedo could be better utilized but who knows, Ramapo Pass is a geographic bottleneck that not much can be done with regardless.
A few months ago, I saw this article about Frontier ending all service out of Stewart Airport (Jetblue did the same during COVID) leaving only Allegiant Airlines serving Orlando, Punta Gorda, Saint Petersburg, and Myrtle Beach domestically.
The Garden State Parkway has expanded multiple times over the years. In places, there are 5 or 6 lanes each direction, and it's still a $hitshow at the wrong time.
When I was working and wanted to attend the North Country School alumni gathering in August, I tried flying non-stop to Stewart instead of flying into Albany with a connection. The business travel in the 1990s for IBM between RTP in NC and Stewart made non-stop flights viable. Having to deal with the NY Thruway traffic on a Sunday south of Albany made it impractical. Traffic is clearly worse in the 2020s.
I don’t think it is the Thruway. Most of the time the traffic is fine. I think it’s just a little too far north and it’s never had enough flights to enough places to become a real hub. My BIL who lives down south is often able to find flights into Westchester but he’s never been able to find one into Stewart that works. Newark has ended up being most practical the few times I have had to fly since I moved to this area. Stewart is a good idea but it just hasn’t lived up to its potential.
Do you remember there was talk about putting in a MagLev from the city up the center of the Thruway to make Stewart International NYC’s fourth hub? They were saying you could get up there from downtown in something crazy like 15 minutes, making it faster than getting to JFK.
