Route Description
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 0.02 miles (0.03 km) 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 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. 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. After 250 yards (229 m), it veers east onto Tonawanda's portion of Grand Island Boulevard for 0.5 miles (0.8 km) to a junction with Sheridan Drive. The latter carries NY 325, a 1.42-mile (2.29 km) 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.
Read more about this topic: New York State Route 324
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