Interstate 87 (I-87): New York and North Carolina Routes, Miles and Safety

How long is I-87?

In its January 2026 edition, the FHWA Route Log lists 346.74 miles of I-87: 333.65 in New York and 13.09 in North Carolina. It names Albany-Schenectady, Glens Falls and Saratoga Springs as the New York urban areas on the route, and Raleigh in North Carolina.

Other published lengths land close to those rows. Wikipedia gives 333.49 miles for the New York road and 12.90 for the North Carolina one, while Interstate Guide prints 13.09 in its North Carolina text and 13.90 in its page header. Wikipedia breaks the New York road into three named parts: the Major Deegan Expressway, about 8.30 miles in the Bronx; the Thruway from the Yonkers line to Albany, about 148 miles by milepost; and the Northway, about 176 miles to the border. Both roads share pavement with a three-digit route. In New York, I-87 and I-287 run together on the Thruway from Suffern to Elmsford, across the Hudson, and the Route Log's overlap note puts that at 19.20 miles. In Raleigh, the first 2.9 miles of North Carolina's I-87 are also the I-440 Beltline.

Where I-87 starts and ends

I-87 is two roads that never meet. The New York one starts at exit 47 of I-278, the Bruckner Expressway, in the Port Morris section of the Bronx, just north of the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge. As the Major Deegan it runs to the Yonkers city line, where the Thruway takes over and the exit numbers start again at 1. North of Elmsford it picks up I-287, crosses the Hudson on the Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge and drops I-287 at Suffern, then passes Newburgh and Kingston on the way to Thruway exit 24 in Albany. From there the Adirondack Northway carries it past Saratoga Springs and Glens Falls, through the Adirondack Park and on to Plattsburgh. It ends at the Canadian border in Champlain and continues as Quebec's Autoroute 15 toward Montreal.

The North Carolina I-87 starts at the I-40 and I-440 interchange in southeast Raleigh, exit 301 on I-40. It follows the I-440 Beltline for about 3 miles, then turns east onto the Knightdale Bypass, a freeway it shares with US 64 and, for part of the way, US 264. For now it ends at exit 14, US 64 Business (Wendell Boulevard) in Wendell. The planned extension follows US 64 to I-95 at Rocky Mount, continues through Tarboro and Williamston, picks up US 17 to Elizabeth City and crosses into Chesapeake, Virginia, with a long-range goal of reaching I-64 and I-464 near Norfolk.

Interstate junctions along I-87

The list reads north to south through New York, then jumps to Raleigh. It begins at Albany with I-90, where the Thruway hands I-87 to the Northway, and has no entries between Albany and the border. Heading south it meets I-84 at Newburgh and I-95 in the Bronx. The North Carolina road meets I-40 where it begins in Raleigh. Three-digit routes are left off, so I-278 at the Bronx end, the shared I-287 stretch and the I-440 Beltline are not listed.

Fatal crashes on I-87

Crashes on I-87's main line killed 105 people from 2020 through 2024, about 21 a year across both roads. That works out to 6.1 deaths per 100 route miles a year, well below the Interstate-wide 9.5, and places I-87 40th of 56 ranked routes, where 1 is the highest rate. Yearly deaths ran 22 in 2020, 23 in 2021, 19 in 2022 and 14 in 2023, then jumped to 27 in 2024, the most of the five years. NHTSA still calls its 2024 file preliminary.

New York had 93 of the deaths on its 333.65 Route Log miles, a rate of 5.6. North Carolina had 12, all in Wake County, but its 13.09 miles are too few for a rate of its own. By county, the Bronx leads with 18 deaths on the Major Deegan's roughly 8 miles. Saratoga County, on the Northway, had 14, followed by Wake (12), Orange (11) and Rockland (9).

Counties with the most I-87 crash deaths

Bridges on I-87

Across both roads, 220 NBI bridges (2025 file) carry I-87 traffic; their median year built is 1962. Of those, 69 rate Good, 133 Fair and 18 Poor, or 8.2 percent. Every Poor rating is in New York, which has 213 of the bridges. North Carolina's 7 have none.

The Hudson crossing between Nyack and Tarrytown is the Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge, a cable-stayed replacement for the Tappan Zee Bridge, which was built from 1952 to 1955. Work began in October 2013, the first span opened on August 25, 2017, and the second on September 11, 2018. Farther north, the Northway crosses the Mohawk River on the Thaddeus Kosciusko Bridge, known as the twin bridges.

Tolls on I-87

Two I-87 facilities appear in FHWA's toll inventory as of January 2023, both run by the New York State Thruway Authority: the Thruway main line from New York City to Albany and the Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge between Nyack and Tarrytown. Tolls are collected electronically, by E-ZPass or Tolls by Mail, at gantries that include Yonkers, Woodbury near Harriman and the Albany area. The bridge is tolled southbound only. Going north from the Bronx, then, you pay Thruway tolls but nothing at the bridge. The Major Deegan, the Northway north of Albany and the North Carolina road are free. FHWA's facility miles, 146.10 for the main line and 3.70 for the bridge, describe each facility as a whole, so they will not match a count of tolled I-87 miles.

I-87 auxiliary routes

Three spur numbers come from I-87, and one of them is on two different roads. I-287 has 67.54 miles in northern New Jersey and 13.10 in New York's row, serving Suffern, White Plains and Port Chester. I-787 runs 9.96 miles into Albany. I-587 is a 1.23-mile connector into Kingston, New York, and also a 37.08-mile North Carolina route toward Wilson and Greenville, planned to meet the southern I-87 at Zebulon once US 64 and US 264 are brought up to Interstate standards.

How the number reached the Thruway and Raleigh

Parts of the New York road predate the Interstate system. A 1.5-mile piece of the Major Deegan opened in 1939, named for William Francis Deegan, and the first Tappan Zee Bridge went up from 1952 to 1955. The I-87 number was assigned on August 14, 1957. The Northway was built in sections starting in 1957, the first stretch opened by 1960, and the last one, Underwood to Keeseville, was finished on August 31, 1967; the whole road cost $208 million. That year Parade magazine named the Lake George to Pottersville stretch America's most scenic new highway of 1966. On January 1, 1970, I-87 moved onto the Thruway between Elmsford and Newburgh, and its earlier route between Purchase and Brewster became I-684. The Tappan Zee's replacement took the Governor Mario M. Cuomo name in June 2017, two months before its first span opened.

The North Carolina number came out of plans for the US 64 freeway east of Raleigh, which FHWA approved on December 12, 2013, as I-495 from I-440 to I-540 and Future I-495 beyond. The FAST Act, signed December 4, 2015, made the corridor toward Norfolk a high-priority future Interstate. NCDOT asked for I-89, but AASHTO approved I-87 on May 25, 2016, which gave a mostly east-west road a north-south number, with its east direction signed as north. AASHTO retired the I-495 designation on May 23, 2017, and I-87 signs went up that September 5. Wikipedia gives an estimate of $849.7 million to $945.2 million for the stretch from Williamston to the Virginia line. As of February 2024, Virginia had no timetable for its part and had not put it in its infrastructure budget.

I-87 traffic and road conditions

For a crash, a lane closure or a camera view on I-87 right now, the state traveler links below (511NY and DriveNC) carry live reports, New York's first and North Carolina's second. The death counts on this page end with 2024.

I-87 questions