is designated as a three-digit auxiliary Interstate Highway, I-678 never intersects with its ostensible "parent" Interstate, I-78. Originally, I-78 would have continued eastward through New York City from its current terminus at the Holland Tunnel along the proposed Lower Manhattan Expressway and over the Williamsburg Bridge to Queens, where it would have followed the Bushwick Expressway past the southern end of the Van Wyck Expressway to Laurelton. From here, I-78 would have continued northward onto an extended Clearview Expressway and to the Bronx. Early plans for I-678 had the highway following the Astoria Expressway, a proposed freeway that would run along the NY 25A corridor from I-278 to the Grand Central Parkway. These plans were mostly canceled by the late 1960s, leading to the truncation of I-78 to the Brooklyn–Queens Expressway (I-278) on January 1, 1970. In March 1971, Governor Nelson Rockefeller revealed a plan for improving New York City highways. The plan denied funding to several proposed New York City Interstate Highways, including the Astoria Expressway. Rockefeller said that these highways did not qualify for a funding agreement from the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1952. The New York Times quoted a state official who said that this move had the effect of canceling these projects. I-78 currently ends at the east portal of the Holland Tunnel. Late 20th century In early 1988, both directions of the Whitestone Expressway near Northern Boulevard were temporarily closed because several girders in the southbound viaduct had corroded to the point that a structural failure was imminent. This part of the Whitestone Expressway, as well as the Van Wyck Expressway from Fowler Avenue south to the Long Island Expressway, were renovated in the mid-1990s. Starting in 2003, the northbound lanes of the Whitestone Expressway near Northern Boulevard were renovated. The project involved replacing a bascule bridge that had been at the location since the original parkway had opened in 1939, creating two U-turn ramps, and creating a new exit ramp from eastbound Northern Boulevard to Linden Place. Previously, traffic from Northern Boulevard had to cross over three lanes of northbound traffic from the Van Wyck Expressway. The Jamaica Branch of the AirTrain JFK people mover system was built within the median of the Van Wyck from Atlantic Avenue to the Belt Parkway. Construction started in May 1998. The fact that the Jamaica branch had to be built in the middle of the Van Wyck