Last Updated on 10/22/2026
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Decades ago, it was recognized that existing tools in state law – official road maps and seasonal limited-use roads as described above – did not provide enough options for local municipalities in managing their road system. In 1985, the NYS Legislative Commission on Rural Resources hosted symposiums during which rural municipalities raised concerns about a mismatch between the guidelines for design and maintenance of rural highways and actual traffic volumes. A year later, the state legislature responded by creating the Local Road Classification Task Force, charged with developing “alternative guidelines for classifying town or county roads in rural areas according to principal uses and traffic volume; for each class of road, the width of the driving surface and guidelines necessary to construct such roads and bridges; for each class of road the guidelines for maintenance and operation that may be required; and signs that may be needed to designate each class of road along with designated speed limits and other applicable guidelines.” It is important to emphasize that state law empowered a state task force to produce materials and recommendations balancing the construction and design of road infrastructure with cost, maintenance, and purpose of operation.
As a result of the task force’s work, the “Guidelines for Rural Town and County Roads” manual was developed which outlined the proposed classification system, rehabilitation design guidelines, local road maintenance guidelines and various tools for analyzing and classifying road systems. The guidelines were used in conjunction with “Highway Standards for Low Volume Roads in New York State” produced by the Cornell Local Roads Program, which provided sample road standards for new roads and maintenance of existing roads and included a template local law. In rural NYS, low-volume roads comprise more than 75 percent of the combined town and county mileage[i] utilized by vehicles[ii] today. “Rural,” for the purposes of the classifications, is defined by the following criteria:1) any county with a population of less than 200,000, or 2) any town of less than 150 persons per square mile[iii].
From the late 1980s on, these documents were used by rural towns to enact low volume and minimum maintenance road standards and local laws using home rule authority. These local laws, while effective for their intended purpose, were subject to several legal challenges. The Tug Hill Commission and many partners statewide, at the request of local towns, worked for decades to get the principles outlined by the task force adopted into state law to make the process more legally defensible. In 2024, Highway Law § 205-c took effect outlining and allowing this process for the town of Lorraine, in Jefferson County (see case study later in this document). The hope is that the success of the process in Lorraine will encourage the state legislature to include more towns in this new section of law in the future.
In Highway Law § 205-c, low-volume roads are defined and subclassified as the following:
- “Low-volume road” shall mean a town highway or portion thereof located in a designated town, when such highway has an average daily traffic count of less than four hundred motor vehicles per day. Such term shall not apply to any highway or road or portion thereof which has previously been abandoned pursuant to subdivision one of § 205 (highways abandoned) because it shall not have been used or traveled as a highway for six years.
- “Agricultural land access road” shall mean a low-volume road that provides access to farm land. Traffic volumes are low and vary seasonally.
- “Farm access road” shall mean a low-volume road that provides principal motor vehicle access for the transport of goods and services necessary for effective support of a farm’s daily operations to and from the primary location or center of such operations. Traffic volume is generally low, significantly less than four hundred motor vehicles per day, and may include occasional heavy vehicles and farm equipment as well as other motor vehicles.
- “Recreation land access road” shall mean a low-volume road that provides access to recreational land including seasonal dwellings, parks and recreational lands. Volumes can vary with the type of recreation facility, activity and season of the year.
Unlike seasonal road designations, these designations are considered permanent unless legislated otherwise. In light of the language in Highway Law § 205-c, the Tug Hill Commission, with some assistance from legal counsel, has created a new template local law for towns other than Lorraine, who are not currently included in this section of state law to use, to implement a low volume and minimum maintenance road law under their home rule powers. See Appendix B. It should be noted that most local town roads on Tug Hill are by definition low volume roads.
[i] Local Roads Research and Coordination Council Manual: Guidelines for Rural Town and County Roads 2012, p. 1
[ii] For the purposes of this paper, “motor vehicles” will align with the same definition of motor vehicles pursuant to New York State’s Vehicle and Traffic Law § 125. See “Glossary of Terms” for full legal definition.
[iii] Local Roads Research and Coordination Council Manual: Guidelines for Rural Town and County Roads 2012, p. 33