Border Statistics

I wanted to find out what the border traffic was like over Super Bowl weekend.

I did not hear of any traffic tie-ups at the border so I agree with the Mayor that there is no crisis at the border any longer, at least for the immediate future. As Eddie said, "the border is a way of life for us, it's not an impediment."

I also did my own investigations to see what the numbers were like . My sources tell me that:

1. Traffic was down significantly at both the Tunnel and Bridge compared with a normal week-end, about 40% over-all
2. There were not 600-700 Super Bowl buses (obviously, it depends how one wants to count buses. There was an increase in buses over a regular weekend but not a number close to 600 more)
3. When looking at bus traffic, how many of the buses were used for the international media for their Windsor reception and guests at the private NFL Canada party at the Armouries
4. If those numbers are down, then I expect the Duty Free Shops numbers were down as well (in fact, I heard they were down considerably but I cannot confirm that)
5. I expect that both the Bridge and Tunnel were fully staffed and more since no one wanted to be "blamed" if a fan was stuck at the border and missed a second of the super Bowl. The same for both US and Canadian customs. If numbers were down by that much, how much extra costs did they incur?

It was suggestd that the bars were packed downtown. Either Pittsburgh fans came via Buffalo to cross the border OR most of the party-goers were locals ie people from Southern Ontario.

It will be interesting to see how this is spinned over the next week.