COLONIE — Northway is finally getting its Exit 3.

For decades, there was no exit between exits 2 and 4, but the new exchange that is being built to directly link the Northway to Albany International Airport will be called Exit 3.

The lack of an Exit 3 has been joked about for years. In 2009, McDonald's made reference to it in an advertisement that highlighted local oddities.

A sign erected on the Northway in 1971 that said Exit 3 was "to be built" was eventually removed.

Learn more about the project with a state-produced video.

Exit 3, the exit that would have connected to Interstate 687 running from downtown Albany to the (then) Albany County Airport, will open by the end of the year, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced during an appearance Tuesday morning at Albany International Airport.

The new interchange is part of nearly $100 million in improvements in and around the airport, including a new 1,000-car parking garage.

Cuomo said his administration has invested billions of dollars in new transportation and other infrastructure.

"Government is about making it happen," Cuomo said of the projects, from a new LaGuardia Airport in Queens ("the first new airport in this nation in 25 years," he told reporters after the event), and a new bridge carrying the Thruway across the Hudson, to investments in airports statewide. A newly redesigned airport in Elmira was featured in the latest issue of Architectural Record.

The $50 million exit project to streamline the connection between the Northway and the airport is well ahead of schedule (if you don't count the 50-year delay after it was proposed), with completion expected by the end of this year.

Interstate 687, which would have tunneled under Washington Park from Empire State Plaza to what is now the Corporate Woods exit on Interstate 90 before continuing on to the airport, was scrapped decades ago following neighborhood opposition along the route.

On Tuesday, elected officials, including Cuomo, gathered around a sign in an airport hangar proclaiming the new Exit 3 to Albany International Airport.

So will Exit 4 now go away? No. It will continue to exist, with the short northbound off-ramp to Wolf Road remaining in place, just north of the new overpass that will carry the Exit 3 northbound off ramp over the Northway to Albany Shaker Road.

Southbound, a newly configured Exit 4 off ramp from the Northway will connect to old Wolf Road.

Will Waldron/Albany Times Union

The rest of the interchange will now be Exit 3.