Battle of the Bridges

With a steady drop in border traffic at the Detroit River, why are a private businessman and a public consortium each competing vigorously to build a new bridge between Detroit and Windsor?

(page 1 of 5)

In mid-January, hopes soared among public officials, including Windsor Mayor Eddie Francis and state Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Detroit), whose 12th District covers 95,000 residents on the city’s southwest side, when the U.S. Department of Transportation gave preliminary environmental clearance for a public bridge in Detroit. The project seeks to acquire, clear, and relocate hundreds of people who occupy some 300 acres of residential neighborhoods, businesses, churches, and factories in an area bounded by I-75, Springwells, Campbell, and Jefferson. At the same time, the proposed new span would abut numerous neighborhoods, as well as landmarks such as Fort Wayne.

That public undertaking is competing with a private effort to build another bridge adjacent to the existing Ambassador Bridge, where $230 million in government improvements to neighboring sections of I-75 and I-96 — including a major plaza and access roads — is scheduled for completion later this year. Business tycoon Manuel “Matty” Moroun, who says he’s already spent $500 million to prepare for a new crossing on both sides of the river and will invest another $500 million to build the second span, owns the Ambassador Bridge. Moroun says the motivation to build a second span is twofold. For starters, the current bridge, completed in 1929, has a lifespan of around 100 years. The other reason is concerted competition from other ports in the United States and Canada. (The port authority in Montreal, for example, recently unveiled a $2.5-billion, 12-year expansion plan that would allow it to handle 4.5 million cargo containers annually, up from a current level of 1.5 million containers.)

Canadian officials have been exploring the establishment of a free-trade agreement with Europe that would seek to boost the transfer of goods, at the expense of the United States and Mexico. Canada has also instituted an aggressive campaign to control every border crossing it shares with the United States.

“We’ve been working for 20 years to add our span because it’s needed,” Moroun said during a recent interview at a converted school in Warren that serves as his headquarters. “We worked with federal, state, and local governments in the 1990s planning for the second span, which had to be done in tandem with the massive road improvements you’re seeing today at I-75 and I-96. That just doesn’t happen overnight. It requires tremendous time, planning, and investment. I don’t have a crystal ball, but border traffic has dropped considerably from 1999, whether you operate a bridge or a tunnel.

Adding more competition, especially when you have to get approvals from the same people who want to compete with you, strikes me as unfair and duplicitous.”

While the environmental clearance was a necessary step for the proposed public bridge, called the Detroit River International Crossing (DRIC), public officials haven’t said how the $4-billion project will be paid for, let alone how it will be financed. Considering border traffic across the Ambassador Bridge, the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel, and the Blue Water Bridge near Port Huron has dropped considerably from its peak in 1999, loan reviewers (including those calling for public bonds) will cast a wary eye on attempting to finance one new border crossing, let alone two. And if the public bridge can’t meet its loan payments, taxpayers will likely be on the hook to provide additional funds.

Last year, nearly 7.4 million vehicles crossed the Ambassador Bridge, down from 12.4 million in 1999, or a loss of 5 million vehicles, according to the Public Borders Operators Association. During the same 10-year period, traffic at the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel reached a peak of 9.6 million vehicles in 1999. But last year, the tunnel accommodated only 4.8 million vehicles. Traffic at the Blue Water Bridge showed a similar trend — it reached a high of 6.0 million vehicles in 2000, but it’s experienced a mostly downward trend since then. Last year, traffic was 4.9 million.

While Michigan’s seven-year recession has contributed to the drop in border traffic, flagging auto sales are another reason — along with falling market share among the Big Three automakers. The latter trends have slowed the movement of parts and components to final assembly plants in southeastern Michigan and southwestern Ontario. That trend, combined with heightened security measures following the 9/11 terrorist attacks that made travel between the United States and Canada more difficult, as well as the steady increase in the production of auto parts in developing countries like China (though the recent global financial meltdown has slowed manufacturing of late), have put a further strain on traffic flow.

Despite the steady drop in traffic and the huge public infrastructure investment put in motion in the 1990s to provide access to a planned second span of the Ambassador Bridge, Tlaib and other politicians are rushing forward to encourage the construction of a public bridge. While it’s difficult for anyone to argue that steadily falling traffic patterns warrant the addition of a third border crossing in Detroit (recall the government already paid millions of dollars to improve access to the Ambassador Bridge), Tlaib doesn’t seemed moved.

In a recent open letter to the community, Tlaib explained she was working to protect her constituents from the Detroit International Bridge Co., one of the many companies Moroun owns. Tlaib, who took office in January, writes that she has “demanded that the [freeway and bridge] project’s final form reflect its original intent — to keep bridge traffic off our surface streets.” The letter doesn’t explain how that goal would be accomplished, given the numerous businesses in the area that rely on truck deliveries via local roads, be it automotive parts plants, grocery stores, or restaurants. And not all of the trucks come from the Ambassador — delivery trucks may arrive from the tunnel, Lansing, Toledo, or various other points of entry. What’s more, truck traffic in the area is largely confined to major roads such as Fort and Vernor, not to residential streets.

There’s also no discussion of the local truck traffic that would be generated by the public bridge proposal that Tlaib has been working on — which, if built, would be located just one mile west of the Ambassador. Trucks would still need to access that bridge from local streets, and the same businesses would need deliveries, regardless of where the goods come from.

Whatever the motivation, it’s clear Tlaib doesn’t support the addition of a second span of the Ambassador Bridge. In her recent letter to the community, she wrote: “We know, as do all our neighbors, the years of frustration, disappointment, anger, sadness, and rage that grow from knowing what it is to live in the shadow of that towering monstrosity that we call The Bridge. We know the injustice of sharing our neighborhood with the worst neighbors in all of Detroit — The Detroit International Bridge Company.”

In a recent interview, Tlaib was more pragmatic, saying she’d support the second span “if the federal government approves a final environmental-impact clearance and the bridge company gets all the necessary approvals from Canada.” But she adds that the bridge company is difficult to deal with because it’s a private concern. “We can’t issue an FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) [request], and all I’m doing is trying to protect our residents and businesses.”

Tlaib also complains about the pollution generated in the area by the trucks that cross over the Ambassador Bridge (though she never mentions the tunnel or the trucks that arrive from elsewhere to handle local deliveries). She says she’s hopeful the EPA will require that greater pollution restrictions be put in place at the Ambassador Bridge, but the federal government has already been quite active in reducing emissions from nitrogen oxides and particulate matter generated from petroleum-based engines. Beginning with the 2007 model year, almost all of the petroleum-based diesel fuel in North America was converted to a standard called ultra-low sulfur diesel. According to EPA estimates, the new diesel fuel standards have reduced nitrogen-oxide emissions by 2.6 million tons per year, while soot and particulate matter dropped by 110,000 tons annually.

Did you like what you read? Subscribe to DBusiness »