It Is Time To Pull The Plug
I had a choice the other night at the DRIC Community Consultation Group meeting. I could pretend that I was interested to help the bureaucrats design a Customs Plaza location on the Canadian side or have a piece of cake and a coffee. Instead of building the plaza, I “desserted” them.
I am not being a smart ass…well maybe I am. I do not understand the reason for an exercise where people who have little engineering skill, lack knowledge about the economic needs of businesses on the waterfront and who are not provided with relevant information are given the task to determine where an 80-100 acre plaza should go for trucks to clear Customs. You will see the results of my colleagues’ work on the DRIC website. It does fulfill the requirement for “public participation.” To top this off, we heard that there are going to be public workshops soon so many more of my fellow citizens can have sweets too. As an American friend of mine told me "This whole study fiasco is the difference between ensuring due process and making sure the people are duly processed!"
I have written already about the faults of the “Vision Statement of Future” exercise on the other side and wondered how expropriating the assets of private companies all of a sudden became part of the DRIC exercise. It was pretty obvious as well how the move to “public ownership” is being handled over there too. Who am I to say that the only proponent left after the “privately owned ” Ambassador Bridge and DRTP have been eliminated is the “public.” (Oh I know about Mich-Can but even that is a publicly owned bridge run by private operators for a period of time).
If DRIC wanted true “citizen participation,” then the Governments would have provided intervenor status for citizens. That means funding the retention of experts who would understand the process and have the required skills to provide assistance to citizens groups to allow for meaningful participation. That was refused. Of course, the Process could have been designed differently but the way it was done meant no money. Governments could have provided funding if they chose to do so, but they did not. We cannot allow citizens to be too involved after all.
I am tired of the DRIC process. I am getting eyestrain from reading all of their reports and a backache from lifting them. They already gave us the solution after spending about 2 years of time and several million dollars of taxpayer money. The answer was a crossing either at the Ojibway corridor or at the twinned bridge corridor. It really is still the same answer today except we had to spend more time and money to get to the same point and now have to spend even more to get to the Final Point. (Yes I know they eliminated the Twinned Bridge from DRIC but how they did it is also something that bugs me: choose a plaza that no one suggested and a road route no one advocated)
What else was achieved during the period? Many residents on both sides of the river had to fear that the truck road was going in their backyard because of the 15 alternatives. I won’t speak about the US side but on our side the Court of Appeal did not legally require this kind of examination of alternative routes in my opinion. It scared people and accomplished little other than make people stay up late at night worrying about their homes and families.
Look at the potential messes we have had to endure in Windsor from the time the JMC made their first report until now: truck roads all over the City to allow each proponent to have an equal chance of success, loss of EC Row as a community road, residents of Riberdy Road waking up one morning to find they are a target as did residents of Todd Lane, destruction of the Ojibway nature reserve. On the other side…the Downriver communities, Delray, SW Detroit. It would be hilarious if it was not so disturbing.
And what are we looking at now?
There is the obvious disarray amongst the experts on the US and Canadian teams. The Americans like the Ambassador Gateway plaza since they are spending $200 million for it. The Canadians only like part of what the Bridge Co. is doing, probably because we have spent little in comparison.
Are we going to have a bridge at Prospect or Brock or somewhere in between as a compromise between the two sides? Then we get the engineering fiasco: the link up. We hear talk of straight line bridges, diagonal bridges and now S-shaped bridges. The length of the bridge----well you calculate the distance and the extra costs for one going between Prospect or even further south and the Ambassador Gateway Plaza. When push comes to shove, are the Americans going to spend even more of their money to please us when it comes time to build something?
In fact, there is a new proposal that is gaining tremendous momentum now. DO NOTHING. That came through loud and clear from several Michigan newspaper editorials. I heard Detroit Councillor Watson ask the question of US DRIC and force the MDOT rep to admit that were looking at that option (but not very visibly I might add) and would consider it. Seriously, who needs a new crossing if traffic is not growing and if there is not enough of it to sustain so many crossings economically? The crossings could go broke. In other words why spend the billions being projected as the costs for roads, plazas and bridges when there are other community needs?
Are we seeing true engineering concerns or the agendas of Governments playing out through DRIC?
The process is clearly political so let’s agree on that. DRIC is convenient for the politicians at the Senior Levels on our side. We must “respect” the process which is the call for inaction. On the US side, on the other hand, when the going got tough politically Downriver, Governor Granholm got going!
What the Governments are being forced to do by citizen power on the US side is to do their job and make decisions in a timely fashion. They and not a bunch of bureaucrats will have to make and take responsibility for what has to be done on choosing a new crossing. Governor Granholm and Detroit Councillors Cockrel and Watson understand that very well and let DRIC US know that in no uncertain terms. By the way, it is election year for the Governor and certain legislators at the State and Federal levels. Voter power!
On our side, it’s time our politicians did so or they will become irrelevant. We all knew the process ultimately had to have the Americans’ approval. A region of 200,000 was not going to tell Detroit and SE Michigan what was going to be done. Our politicians have to start making decisions and not hide behind more studies and more experts’ reports.
It will be interesting to see what the 2005 traffic numbers are for cars and trucks at the border at the Bridge and Tunnel. Have they gone up, remained steady or, heaven forbid, dropped again? I am sure that it is safe to say that at best, they would have increased by a fraction. At the worst, they will have dropped considerably.
Using this as our scenario, doesn’t it mean that we have to revise our thinking? Doesn't it mean that the wild-eyed projections of dramatic traffic growth have to be abandoned? Doesn’t it mean that we have to look differently at the border?
If that is so, since DRIC has given us the options for a crossing and how to get there, what more do we need from them? If that is so, why are we spending money and wasting time on more and more studies and reports that deal with a problem that we do not need to deal with for the foreseeable future? If that is so, why do we need DRIC any longer?
It is time to do the merciful thing for everyone involved. It is time to pull the funding of DRIC on both sides of the border. It is time to pull the plug on DRIC and end it.
I am not being a smart ass…well maybe I am. I do not understand the reason for an exercise where people who have little engineering skill, lack knowledge about the economic needs of businesses on the waterfront and who are not provided with relevant information are given the task to determine where an 80-100 acre plaza should go for trucks to clear Customs. You will see the results of my colleagues’ work on the DRIC website. It does fulfill the requirement for “public participation.” To top this off, we heard that there are going to be public workshops soon so many more of my fellow citizens can have sweets too. As an American friend of mine told me "This whole study fiasco is the difference between ensuring due process and making sure the people are duly processed!"
I have written already about the faults of the “Vision Statement of Future” exercise on the other side and wondered how expropriating the assets of private companies all of a sudden became part of the DRIC exercise. It was pretty obvious as well how the move to “public ownership” is being handled over there too. Who am I to say that the only proponent left after the “privately owned ” Ambassador Bridge and DRTP have been eliminated is the “public.” (Oh I know about Mich-Can but even that is a publicly owned bridge run by private operators for a period of time).
If DRIC wanted true “citizen participation,” then the Governments would have provided intervenor status for citizens. That means funding the retention of experts who would understand the process and have the required skills to provide assistance to citizens groups to allow for meaningful participation. That was refused. Of course, the Process could have been designed differently but the way it was done meant no money. Governments could have provided funding if they chose to do so, but they did not. We cannot allow citizens to be too involved after all.
I am tired of the DRIC process. I am getting eyestrain from reading all of their reports and a backache from lifting them. They already gave us the solution after spending about 2 years of time and several million dollars of taxpayer money. The answer was a crossing either at the Ojibway corridor or at the twinned bridge corridor. It really is still the same answer today except we had to spend more time and money to get to the same point and now have to spend even more to get to the Final Point. (Yes I know they eliminated the Twinned Bridge from DRIC but how they did it is also something that bugs me: choose a plaza that no one suggested and a road route no one advocated)
What else was achieved during the period? Many residents on both sides of the river had to fear that the truck road was going in their backyard because of the 15 alternatives. I won’t speak about the US side but on our side the Court of Appeal did not legally require this kind of examination of alternative routes in my opinion. It scared people and accomplished little other than make people stay up late at night worrying about their homes and families.
Look at the potential messes we have had to endure in Windsor from the time the JMC made their first report until now: truck roads all over the City to allow each proponent to have an equal chance of success, loss of EC Row as a community road, residents of Riberdy Road waking up one morning to find they are a target as did residents of Todd Lane, destruction of the Ojibway nature reserve. On the other side…the Downriver communities, Delray, SW Detroit. It would be hilarious if it was not so disturbing.
And what are we looking at now?
There is the obvious disarray amongst the experts on the US and Canadian teams. The Americans like the Ambassador Gateway plaza since they are spending $200 million for it. The Canadians only like part of what the Bridge Co. is doing, probably because we have spent little in comparison.
Are we going to have a bridge at Prospect or Brock or somewhere in between as a compromise between the two sides? Then we get the engineering fiasco: the link up. We hear talk of straight line bridges, diagonal bridges and now S-shaped bridges. The length of the bridge----well you calculate the distance and the extra costs for one going between Prospect or even further south and the Ambassador Gateway Plaza. When push comes to shove, are the Americans going to spend even more of their money to please us when it comes time to build something?
In fact, there is a new proposal that is gaining tremendous momentum now. DO NOTHING. That came through loud and clear from several Michigan newspaper editorials. I heard Detroit Councillor Watson ask the question of US DRIC and force the MDOT rep to admit that were looking at that option (but not very visibly I might add) and would consider it. Seriously, who needs a new crossing if traffic is not growing and if there is not enough of it to sustain so many crossings economically? The crossings could go broke. In other words why spend the billions being projected as the costs for roads, plazas and bridges when there are other community needs?
Are we seeing true engineering concerns or the agendas of Governments playing out through DRIC?
The process is clearly political so let’s agree on that. DRIC is convenient for the politicians at the Senior Levels on our side. We must “respect” the process which is the call for inaction. On the US side, on the other hand, when the going got tough politically Downriver, Governor Granholm got going!
What the Governments are being forced to do by citizen power on the US side is to do their job and make decisions in a timely fashion. They and not a bunch of bureaucrats will have to make and take responsibility for what has to be done on choosing a new crossing. Governor Granholm and Detroit Councillors Cockrel and Watson understand that very well and let DRIC US know that in no uncertain terms. By the way, it is election year for the Governor and certain legislators at the State and Federal levels. Voter power!
On our side, it’s time our politicians did so or they will become irrelevant. We all knew the process ultimately had to have the Americans’ approval. A region of 200,000 was not going to tell Detroit and SE Michigan what was going to be done. Our politicians have to start making decisions and not hide behind more studies and more experts’ reports.
It will be interesting to see what the 2005 traffic numbers are for cars and trucks at the border at the Bridge and Tunnel. Have they gone up, remained steady or, heaven forbid, dropped again? I am sure that it is safe to say that at best, they would have increased by a fraction. At the worst, they will have dropped considerably.
Using this as our scenario, doesn’t it mean that we have to revise our thinking? Doesn't it mean that the wild-eyed projections of dramatic traffic growth have to be abandoned? Doesn’t it mean that we have to look differently at the border?
If that is so, since DRIC has given us the options for a crossing and how to get there, what more do we need from them? If that is so, why are we spending money and wasting time on more and more studies and reports that deal with a problem that we do not need to deal with for the foreseeable future? If that is so, why do we need DRIC any longer?
It is time to do the merciful thing for everyone involved. It is time to pull the funding of DRIC on both sides of the border. It is time to pull the plug on DRIC and end it.
posted by JoeBlog at 6:07 a.m.
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