DETROIT – So whatever happened to the new Gordie Howe International Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario?
The answer is that it is, indeed, still coming, although delays partly related to the pandemic may mean the opening may not happen until 2025.
Gregg Ward, who has been campaigning for a new bridge for many years, isn’t too upset by that possibility. “This is just a blip, a few months maybe, on a bridge that may last for a century,” said Ward. He owns and operates the Detroit-Windsor Truck Ferry, which carries vehicles carrying hazardous materials across the river.
“Looking ahead, I only see good,” he said, adding that people have waited so long for a badly needed new crossing that a slight delay should be no big deal.
However, the Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority, (WDBA), the agency in charge of building the $5 billion bridge, issued a statement earlier this month that it is still planning on opening the bridge to truck, car, and pedestrian traffic by the end of 2024.
They noted that Bridging North America, the contractor they hired to get the job done, “is obligated to meet the contract date specified … and manage any delays they encounter.”
Indeed, if they don’t, the contract specifies they could face stiff financial penalties for every day they run late — and last year, there were indications they were four or five months behind.
But the WDBA has hinted that, thanks largely to the pandemic, they may be more open to “adjustments in schedule.”
In any event, when the bridge does open, it is expected to have a profound positive impact on the economy of the entire region, including Michigan, Ohio and Ontario. The saga of how the bridge finally happened, however, could be a novel.
Today, much of the area’s manufacturing economy and even more of the automotive sector is dependent on the privately owned Ambassador Bridge, which was built in 1930.
That bridge currently carries more than $360 million in trade every day, about one-fourth the value of all trade between the United States and Canada. There is no affordable alternative way of getting this stuff across the border; the nearest other bridge, the Bluewater in Port Huron, is already overcrowded and 67 miles away.
There have been many signs — like concrete falling into neighborhoods under the bridge– that the Ambassador needs to be replaced. Since the 1990s, top executives, including the heads of Ford, Chrysler and GM, have made it clear they want a new bridge.
But nothing happened, because Matty Moroun, the owner of the Ambassador since 1979, spent lavishly to influence politicians, especially in Michigan’s legislature, to prevent it. Ironically, that was ended by a man otherwise largely reviled today: Former Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, whose career was destroyed by the Flint water poisoning scandal.
Soon after taking office in 2011, Snyder, who was independently wealthy and not in need of Moroun cash, came out in favor of a new bridge — and then proceeded, with the help of the Canadian government to make it happen.
He found a loophole in Michigan’s constitution that allowed him to make a deal with Canada to get an international crossing built without legislative approval. The only catch was that the Moroun-influenced Michigan legislature refused to pay any part of it. But Canada offered to cover the entire cost.
Michigan, they said, could pay the money back out of its share of the tolls once the bridge was complete. The deal was done – but Matty Moroun, the self-made billionaire owner filed lawsuit after lawsuit in court after court to try and prevent the bridge from being built.They all failed, but probably delayed the bridge by a year or two.
“Every day he delays the bridge is profits and a win for him,” Ward said. Two years ago, Matty Moroun died at 93, but he was succeeded as head of the family by his only child Matthew, who seems to share his father’s priorities and ways of doing business.
The Moroun family, namely Matthew and his mother Nora, are now intent on building a new Ambassador Bridge next to their current one. The Canadian government has indicated it has little trust in the Morouns, and has given them a long list of conditions they would have to fulfill before they could build a new bridge, including agreeing to tear down the old one.
So far, they’ve done little or nothing to meet them. “I think they are just waiting for the next election,” said Ward, who has fought off repeated attempts by the Morouns to buy his ferry company.
Election in Canada, that is. “They hope that maybe the next government will be more favorable to them than the Trudeau administration,” he added. That election, however, may not be till January 2025. Meanwhile, the younger Moroun has been attempting to get Detroit to sell him a chunk of the city-owned Riverside Park, which he would need for a new span.
But any new Ambassador Bridge — if the Morouns ever really build one –would likely not be able to open until years after the Gordie Howe. Most officials do want a second bridge, if only as a backup or for overflow if demand gradually grows.
In a final twist of irony, Gregg Ward, who has a been a big booster of a new span for decades, says his ferry company will be put out of business by the Gordie Howe bridge.
That’s because trucks carrying hazmat and certain things like huge windmill parts cannot use the Ambassador Bridge, but will be able to use the Gordie Howe. “I don’t know what I’ll do, but I know if we are going to have an (economic) future, we need the new bridge,” he said. Those who understand the economy agree.
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