Keys to the gateway

The gateway to American markets through Windsor, Ont., has been a mess since the events of September 2001. But the effort to make it more efficient lately seems to be without focus. I see a lot of federal and provincial government folk and industry representatives with vested interests flailing around and achieving little to ensure that trade between Canada and the United States is rendered efficient.

Case in point: the Windsor-Gateway Action Plan. Announced in late May, it commits $300 million from the federal and Ontario governments to improve the approaches to the Ambassador Bridge and foster co-operation among bureaucrats in Ottawa and Toronto.

It’s a great plan if your name is Matty Moroun, the controlling shareholder of the Detroit International Bridge Co., the company that owns the bridge. But it’s a dubious one if you’re one of the 300,000 people who live in Windsor and you care about how your city would be carved up in the name of international trade.

For those of you who live in Prince Rupert or Corner Brook, a little background. While traffic in Michigan is led to the Ambassador Bridge by interstate highways, it’s radically different across the Detroit River. Ontario Hwy. 401 rolls mightily across the province to Windsor, but it wimps out about eight kilometres from the border. Thousands of trucks a day pour onto an ordinary four- or sometimes six-lane city street with houses and little strip malls along both sides. Traffic crawls toward the bridge, passing through some 18 stoplights down that stretch of road. The endless string of trucks effectively cuts the city in two. The idiotic Trans Canada through Calgary is nothing in comparison to the traffic Windsor faces.

A fix is long overdue.

There are good suggestions in this plan. One is to create pre-processing and staging centres for trucks long before they reach the border. It’s been talked about before, but no serious action yet.

The big idea is a new dedicated truck route through Windsor’s west end. It would be built below grade, partly along existing routes; 11 of those 18 traffic lights would be eliminated, and pedestrian overpasses would be built.

This would clean up the approach of trucks to the base of the 74-year-old Ambassador Bridge. But once there, traffic would encounter the same capacity crunch it faces now.
What’s needed is an efficient, high-volume, second crossing commercial trucks can use.

Yes, the Windsor-Gateway Action Plan commits bureaucrats to work with other parties proposing a new tunnel and a second bridge. But Moroun’s tenacity, guile, and clout make any real consideration of a rival span unlikely. His company has the unfettered right to set whatever tolls it likes, and, astonishingly, to expropriate land and property in Windsor to facilitate the flow of traffic to the bridge. Talk of the Detroit International Bridge Co. building a twin for the Ambassador Bridge has gone on for years, but so far it’s been just that: talk.

Federal and provincial authorities must have forgotten to consult Windsor Mayor Mike Hurst and his council on all of this-an easy slip, I’m sure–because there is real fury afoot amongst civic leaders. They charge that this plan would effectively split the city in two, cutting off the western half from the core even more than the constant line of trucks does presently.

“I’m so enraged,” said Mayor Hurst after learning of the plan, according to the Windsor Star newspaper. “It’s a proposition that sickens me, angers me, and shocks me all at once,” he added, claiming that the plan has sold out the city for the interests of international truck traffic.

Automotive analyst Dennis DesRosiers called the idea “a disaster for the auto industry,” even though car-makers have so far praised it. They simply haven’t looked closely enough, he says, and don’t understand the implications.

Also quoted in the Star, Windsor West MP Brian Masse called the agreement “a virtual declaration of war” on the people in the city’s west end. He sent an angry letter to both Prime Minister Jean Chretien and Ontario Premier Ernie Eves, saying he “…will not stand idly by and watch this vital community be destroyed.”

In what must be a textbook classic case of misreading local opinion, federal International Co-operation Minister Susan Whelan thanked the people of Windsor for helping forge the new plan. “As we move ahead, our work will continue to be guided by the need to enhance the efficiency, security, and safety of the Windsor Gateway crossings, while minimizing the environmental and health impacts on the residents of the community,” she said.

Trouble is, the locals don’t see it that way. And I can’t blame them for a second. They’re being screwed, plain and simple.

Rolf Lockwood (rolf@todaystrucking.com) is the editorial director of Today’s Trucking.