The TSPC had also planned to realign the road at Lake Mohansic and replace the grade intersection with an interchange. In 1962, while the commission was finishing the northern section of the Taconic, the EHPA began that project. The original parkway became the northbound roadway and a new southbound one was built. The EHPA's improvements made the road safer and more efficient for the commuters who now used it, but changed the character of the road, widening it and replacing its concrete pavement with asphalt and its wooden guardrails with steel ones that were allowed to rust in order to approximate the color of their predecessors. In 1964, I-84 was built through Dutchess and Putnam counties, giving the middle of the Taconic a limited-access intersecting route that made it possible to access the Danbury and Newburgh areas via the parkway.