Transportation in New York (state)
Population expansion of the state generally followed the path of the early waterways, first the Hudson River and then the Erie Canal.
Today, railroad lines and the New York State Thruway follow the same general route.
By the American Revolutionary War, the colonial Province of New York was still small and relatively sparsely populated.
On October 24, 1825, the Erie Canal opened and over the next century would make boom towns out of the Upstate cities of Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Rome, Utica and Schenectady.
One of the most famous urban mass transit systems in the world is the New York City Subway.
New York City is also served by Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH), and an extensive bus system.
The most successful of Amtrak's routes, the Northeast Corridor, operates between Washington, D.C., and Boston, Massachusetts.
One train, known as the Maple Leaf, continues beyond Niagara Falls to Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
New York City is a hub for intercity bus networks in the northeastern United States.
The rest of the state is served by intercity buses run by companies such as Megabus, Greyhound Lines, Trailways of New York, OurBus,[2] North Fork Express,[3] Hampton Jitney, Coach USA Short Line and others.
LaGuardia Airport, colloquially known as LaGuardia or simply LGA – is a civil airport in East Elmhurst, Queens, New York City, situated on the northwestern shore of Long Island, bordering Flushing Bay.
Covering 680 acres (280 ha) as of January 1, 2025[update],[4] the facility was established in 1929 and began operating as a public airport in 1939.
It includes many bridges and limited access highways built by Robert Moses, and is integrated with a street grid that dates to the early 19th century.
The Long Island Expressway, Northern State Parkway, and Southern State Parkway, all products of the automobile-centered planning of Robert Moses, make east–west travel on the island straightforward, if not always quick.
Indeed, locals refer to Long Island Expressway as "The World's Longest Parking Lot".
The Long Island Rail Road is the busiest commuter railroad system in North America, carrying an average of 282,400 customers each weekday on 728 daily trains.
