The eastern half of the freeway, named the Eastern Expressway, was built in stages from the 1950s to the 1970s as a connector between the Inner Loop and the Thruway, and the section west of the Inner Loop and Downtown Rochester to (I-90) in Le Roy is known as the Western Expressway. From downtown Rochester to the Can of Worms, it follows the former right-of-way of the Rochester Subway and, before it, the Erie Canal. The section west of the Inner Loop was mostly built during the 1960s and completed in the early 1970s. During the 1950s and early 1960s, the portion of the Eastern Expressway from what is now the Can of Worms east to Bushnell's Basin was originally designated as part of NY 96. That route was moved back onto its parallel surface routing when I-490 was assigned to the entirety of the then-proposed Le Roy–Victor freeway.