EDITOR’S NOTE: Listen to the complete story and learn a lot more about this topic on my Politics and Prejudices podcast, available now on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, Spotify, and available with video on YouTube and Lessenberryink.com.
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A Bridge Too Long in the Building
Shortly before he retired from office, after a glorious 36 years in the United States Senate, I asked Carl Levin if anything surprised him after all those years.
“The incredible power of Moroun,” he said. I wasn’t surprised. I knew, as he did, that virtually every major business –Ford, General Motors and Chrysler – wanted a modern new bridge to connect the two nations’ freeways to make it easier for the billions in goods that flow across the Windsor-Detroit border every week.
Were something to happen to the Ambassador Bridge, a bridge long past its expected life, the economic consequences for Michigan would be devastating.
Yet an aging billionaire had been able for years to block a needed new bridge from being built, thanks to his ability to essentially buy off the legislature.
Even after Governor Rick Snyder found a way around that, Moroun has still managed to hold up a new bridge for years, and further maximize his profits.
This is a scandal and a disgrace, but the bigger scandal is that we have allowed him to get away with it. If you talk to anyone elsewhere in this world, even elsewhere in this nation, they think it is crazy that a private citizen is allowed to own an international border crossing, and that he doesn’t even allow the governments to inspect it to make sure it is structurally sound.
This is laissez faire capitalism run amok, and a threat to the public safety. It does seem now that a new bridge is happening, much later than it should have.
Whether the Moroun family will ever build a second one is hard to say, but I very much doubt it. There are too many hoops they’d have to jump through at great expense, including relocating an entire street and a number of buildings in Canada at their own expense.
Even if they did, it is hard to imagine that any new span they would build could be competitive with the Gordie Howe International Bridge, for one big reason. Trucks would still have to run a gauntlet of traffic signals to get to Canada’s main highway. The Gordie Howe Bridge is designed to roll traffic seamlessly from I-75 to Canada’s Highway 401, and vice-versa.
Plus, not to be morbid, but Matty Moroun is 92 years old, and even if he started a new bridge today, it is doubtful if he would be around for its opening. What we don’t know is what his only child, Matthew Moroun will do, when decisions about the future are his to make.
My guess is that he will continue operating the old bridge as long as it makes economic sense for him to do so, and then concentrate on the vast trucking operations that are the core of the Moroun empire.
But again — I don’t really know. What I do know is that regardless of politics, government is supposed to operate in the public interest. By dangerously preventing a new bridge from being built for years, our legislature didn’t do so.
We also humiliated and disgraced ourselves on the international stage by refusing to pay our fair share of the costs of the new Gordie Howe International Bridge. Canada is, in fact, paying for everything, and is supposed to someday be reimbursed out of our share of the tolls both nations plan to collect.
This makes Michigan look like a poverty-stricken third world country. Which, without a new bridge, is exactly what we would eventually become.
This is Jack Lessenberry. Thanks for listening, and I hope you’ll listen to more of my podcasts again soon.
