The Tunnel Plaza Is Mickey Mouse

In investment terms, I think that the Detroit/Windsor Tunnel may be a Sleeping Beauty as we have seen with Windsor's desire to own/operate/lease it with or without Detroit.

It is prime for a takeover since it has huge potential for taxpayers in Windsor and Detroit if it is managed by an experienced operator properly and not run by a bunch of wanna-be entrepreneurs. We do not need a BAMBI (Bloody Awful Management Buy-In) going wrong. It has got to be done right! The potential is not just revenues but encouraging trade and tourism.

We in Windsor are looking at the Tunnel as can be seen from the sparsely-attended Public Information Session a few days ago. "The tunnel plaza study is being prepared by McCormick Rankin Corporation who were hired for $870,000. The City also paid traffic planner Sam Schwartz $40,000 to prepare a traffic routing report."

We need a "Louie" after Huey and Dewey. I think that one more company needs to be hired: Walt Disney Imagineering.

I say this because if all we are looking at is queuing, and I do not think that it should be, then we need the experts to help us out. I read this interesting quote about queuing in Disney's parks:

• "..the incredible queues of visitors who patiently wait, sometimes for hours, for admission to exhibits. These queues...provide evidence of the considerable inconvenience that people can be persuaded to tolerate so long as they believe that their best interests require it...it is, interestingly, reinforced through the queueing process itself. In many exhibits queues are structured so that one is brought close to the entrance at several points, thus periodically giving one a glimpse of the fun to come while at the same time encouraging one that the wait will soon be over."
  
  

Is this the goal that the Plan is trying to achieve?

Now I am NOT being Goofy. Walt Disney Imagineering "is the master planning, creative development, design, engineering, production, project management, and research and development arm of" the Disney empire. Seriously, what is the one thing that everyone remarks on at Disney's various theme parks: the line-ups at the rides (some an hour or more in length during busy periods) and how well queuing is handled.

As an example:

• "The light green show building that houses the Indiana Jones® Adventure...physically stands in the parking lot at the southern border of park, which posed an interesting problem to the Walt Disney Imagineering design team: How to get the patrons from Adventureland, to the distant show building and back? The answer came in the form of an elaborate queue that stretches over a mile in length. The Imagineers used what they had learned about themed queues...to create a queue that is an attraction unto itself."

Jiminy Cricket, don't we need their expertise at the Detroit/Windsor Tunnel to make the experience Winnie the Pooh bearable for Tunnel patrons? We have a serious problem that needs a solution. The reduction in traffic is Seven Dwarfing our revenues at the Tunnel.

I am not trying to Peter Pan the work done to date but it seems almost Alice in Wonderland with what it is proposing. The Tunnel Plan Report as I read it does not solve the line-up problem at the Tunnel going into the US. It is really just an exercise "to reduce/eliminate the queuing on City streets."

We really are being Dumbos. Didn't we learn from the Bridge Co. actions that the opening of a few Customs booths at a relatively low cost and having booths fully staffed ended the line-ups as if by Disney magic on Huron Church Road. We cannot Donald Duck the issue at the Tunnel. We learn in the Tunnel Plaza Report "However, even with the currently planned expansion of its queuing space, the U.S. Tunnel Plaza cannot accommodate the expected increase in U.S.-bound traffic." That does seem odd to me frankly since the 50% increase in traffic brings volumes back to the pre 9/11 days. It also makes mockery of objections to the Bridge Co.'s plans for the Tunnel.

We also learn a very important key point. Why the Bridge Co. could solve the problem but it appears that Windsor cannot. "Major improvements to the U.S. Tunnel Plaza to provide adequate processing capacity –outside the City’s jurisdiction and the scope of this study. "

We need to get Detroit involved if we are to solve our problem. I am not sure what their attitude to us is at this point in time after the Joint Councils session. We need to have more than a Plutonic relationship with them don't we? Are we viewed as trustworthy or as Pinocchios? We need to have them fully involved if we are to get a long-term solution.

Aren't we wasting taxpayer money by NOT dealing with the root cause of the problem. To paraphrase: "It's the booths, stupid"----not enough of them and not fully staffed on the Detroit side! Otherwise, we are dealing just with cosmetic issues. The Tinker Bells should be going off now: $30 million merely to create space for queuing in Windsor and not moving traffic through the Tunnel seems like a lot of wasted money to me. And I say this not trying to be a Scrooge McDuck.

We need to rethink, in my opinion, our whole approach to the movement of traffic at the Tunnel. Getting cars off of Goyeau or Wyandotte is not the answer for a tourist who wants to go home quickly. If we do not do it right, then traffic will migrate to the Ambassador Bridge whether we like it or not.

The Tunnel has the potential to be a Cinderella asset. I was told that the only money committed to the Tunnel project so far by the Senior Levels is the money for the Tunnel Plaza Report. I believe that no more money should be spent until the real problems of the Tunnel are addressed! We need to live in the real world, not Fantasyland.