The Grand Central Parkway (GCP) is a parkway that stretches from the Triborough Bridge in New York City to Nassau County on Long Island. At the Queens–Nassau border, it becomes the Northern State Parkway, which runs across the northern part of Long Island through Nassau County and into Suffolk County, where it ends in Hauppauge. The westernmost stretch (from the Triborough Bridge to exit 4) also carries a short stretch of Interstate 278 (I-278). The parkway runs through Queens and passes the Cross Island Parkway, Long Island Expressway, LaGuardia Airport and Citi Field, home of the New York Mets. The North Shore Towers is situated on the parkway on the Queens-side along the Nassau County border. The parkway is designated New York State Route 907M (NY 907M), an unsigned reference route. Despite its name, the Grand Central Parkway was not named after Grand Central Terminal.
The Grand Central Parkway has a few unique distinctions. First, it is apparently the only parkway in New York City to carry an elliptical black-on-white design for its trailblazer. Parkways throughout The Bronx, Manhattan, and Staten Island use the state-standard design, while the Belt system parkways use a modified version of the Long Island regional parkway shield with the Montauk Point Lighthouse logo. Second, it is one of the few parkways in the state to allow truck traffic to any extent. The section shared with I-278 allows for small trucks—larger ones still cannot pass under the intentionally designed low underpasses. Oversize trucks must travel on Astoria Boulevard, the local service road, to reach the bridge.
Read more about Grand Central Parkway: Route Description, History, Exit List
Famous quotes containing the words grand and/or central:
“What is grand is necessarily obscure to weak men. That which can be made explicit to the idiot is not worth my care.”
—William Blake (1757–1827)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)