Lake Ontario State Parkway

Lake Ontario State Parkway
Lake Ontario State Parkway highlighted in red and NY 948A in blue
Route information
Maintained by NYSDOT
Length	35.05 mi[1] (56.41 km)
Existed	early 1950s[2][3]–present
Tourist routes	Great Lakes Seaway Trail
Restrictions	No commercial vehicles; closed west of NY 98 from December to March
Major junctions
West end	NY 18 in Carlton
Major intersections	NY 98 in Carlton NY 19 in Hamlin NY 390 in Greece
East end	Lake Avenue / Pattonwood Drive in Rochester
Location
Country	United States
State	New York
Counties	Orleans, Monroe
Highway system
New York Highways Interstate US State Reference Parkways

The Lake Ontario State Parkway is a 35.05-mile (56.41 km) limited-access parkway along the southern shore of Lake Ontario in Western New York in the United States. The western end of the highway is at a partial interchange within Lakeside Beach State Park in Carlton, Orleans County. Its eastern terminus is at an intersection with Lake Avenue in the Charlotte neighborhood of the Monroe County city of Rochester. The parkway is internally designated by the New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) as New York State Route 947A (NY 947A), an unsigned reference route. A short, 0.55-mile (0.89 km) connector between the west end of the parkway and NY 18 is unsigned New York State Route 948A.

The parkway mainline and the connector to NY 18 are both part of the Seaway Trail, a National Scenic Byway that extends along the shores of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario from northwestern Pennsylvania to the North Country area of New York. The Lake Ontario State Parkway passes through mostly open and rural areas, except near Greece and Rochester, where the land surrounding the highway is more developed. It serves mostly as a connector between Rochester and several lakeside state parks and communities. From its western terminus to the Rochester suburbs, the parkway is the closest continuous roadway to the Lake Ontario shore.

The highway was one of several parkways built as part of a 145-mile (233 km) expansion to the state's parkway system in 1944. Construction of the Lake Ontario State Parkway began in the late 1940s, and the first section of the route—linking Hamlin Beach State Park to NY 261—opened in the early 1950s. The remainder of the highway through Greece and Rochester was built in stages during the 1950s and early 1960s, while the section between Lakeside Beach and Hamlin Beach State Parks was constructed in the early 1970s. The original plans for the highway called for it to extend as far west as Niagara Falls; later proposals moved the terminus to the north end of the Robert Moses State Parkway near Fort Niagara.

The parkway has been underfunded for years by the state. At the beginning of its life, it was planned to go from Rochester to Niagara Falls. In 2017, the western half of the parkway was finally gifted $9 million, to begin project to repave the sections of Route 19 in Hamlin to Payne Beach (approximately 8 miles).^[4] In 2018, $5.2 million was given by the State Of New York. This project paved 7 miles, east and westbound lanes, west of Route 19 (Hamlin) and Route 237 (Kendall). The paving project began in April 2018 and finished in the fall of the same year. During these projects, shoulders were narrowed from 12 to 8 feet.^[5] Still, in 2019, about 12 miles of the parkway are in poor condition; consequently, it sees barely any traffic and is not driveable in the winter. The NYSDOT considered permanently closing the deteriorated part of the parkway, which saw only a few hundred cars a day, but the parkway remained open.