people and property owners for the of land comprising the highway's proposed routing. In addition, the state ceded of land to the Seneca people— of which were taken from the adjacent Allegany State Park—and agreed to support several tax and regulatory exemptions for the Senecas. The transaction was completed in September 1981, and construction on the segment began in 1982. The portion of the expressway between exits 20 and 21 was completed by 1985. On July 21, 1985, construction was halted by protesting Senecas who did not accept the authority of the Seneca people. The protest was organized in part by two owners of property in the path of the highway and involved the construction of an encampment on the right-of-way of the Southern Tier Expressway. The state had conducted studies on realigning the highway to bypass the disputed section; however, the Indians vacated the encampment five days later. A temporary injunction prohibiting further disruptions of the highway's construction was issued in early August, allowing work on the Salamanca–Seneca Junction (exit 23) section of the expressway to resume on August 13. This segment was completed by 1989 while the last section between Seneca Junction and Allegany was opened to traffic by 1995. Work on the Corning Bypass, a freeway around the northern and eastern fringes of the city of Corning, began in the mid-1980s. The first segment of the highway—between NY 414 (exit 46) and East Corning—was completed by 1989 while the rest opened in the mid-1990s. The completion of the Corning Bypass, the last substantial gap in the freeway, created a continuous, mostly limited-access highway between Erie, Pennsylvania, and Harriman, New York. The completed highway, designated as PA 17 and NY 17, served as a time-saving, toll-free alternate route to the Thruway for motorists going from the New York City area to Ohio and points west. In fact, the New York State Thruway Authority initially opposed the highway's construction, fearing the loss of toll revenue on its own route from motorists shunpiking via the new highway. Designation and conversion The portion of the two-state freeway from I-90 near Erie to I-81 in Binghamton is designated as Corridor T of the Appalachian Development Highway System. In 1998, all of PA 17 and the portion of NY 17 from the Pennsylvania state line to Harriman were designated "High Priority Corridor 36" in the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21).