The road heads to the northwest as the two-lane Lake Road, immediately passing through the linear Old Erie Canal State Historic Park before meeting County Route 76 (CR 76, named Canal Street) at a junction just outside the park limits.

From CR 76, NY 316 runs past a handful of isolated homes and farms as it parallels Oneida Creek through the rural, northern section of the city.

The town line also marks a change in the route's surroundings as the scattered homes give way to undeveloped open fields.

[3] When NY 31 was assigned in the mid-1920s, it initially served the city of Oneida instead of bypassing it to the north as it does today.

[2] The route originally extended southward into downtown Oneida by way of an overlap with NY 46;[8] however, the concurrency was eliminated by 1970.