History Repeating Itself

My head aches from everything going on at the border. Who can understand it any more? There is so much stuff coming out that a mere mortal cannot keep up any more, never mind a Blogmeister.

The Mayor spoke to the Senators the other day as if the Senators cared what he had to say. Then they will hear the Bridge Co. today and they will care. EA hearings in the US, EA hearings in Canada. More DRIC hearings.

Then there are the possible lawsuits by the Mayor. Aren't his options exhausted by now? Or at least tired from being trotted out so much?

We heard Transport Minister Cannon saying P3s if necessary but not necessarily P3s. What the heck does this mean:

• "I can tell you today, the Government of Canada for its part intends to explore the opportunity to partner with the private sector to design, build, finance, and operate the new crossing."

According to Mark Butler of Transport Canada quoted in Todays Trucking magazine, it means little although the mass media thinks it means something:

• "The minister will be addressing P3s in his speech, because of the audience, and will talk about ways in which the Government of Canada has already expressed interest in P3s. But there will absolutely be no announcement regarding the Windsor-Detroit gateway and a P3," he says.
  
  "Certainly P3s is one of various solutions we're looking at for financing of the new crossing, but no decisions have been made."

Wham....That'll teach Cansfield and Salmons!

Now the Minister of Finance with his Advantage Canada

• "We will also look for ways to get more out of infrastructure investments by taking advantage of the innovative financing provided through public-private partnerships.
  
  And let me say, Mr. Chairman, that we believe there is a lot of room for improvement in how we manage infrastructure projects.
  
  Take, for example, the Windsor-Detroit Corridor. Windsor-Detroit is the crossing point for 28 per cent of all trade in goods between Canada and the United States.
  
  It is just not acceptable that, after all these years, governments have not finished the job to make this crossing more efficient and secure.
  
  Surely we can do better, and we will. A financing strategy for this vital crossing will be addressed in the next budget to get the job done expeditiously.."

And the Province

• "The Ontario government has developed a North America Gateway strategy to widen parts of Highway 401 and ease traffic jams at the Windsor-Detroit crossing, projects that Ottawa is being asked to help fund to protect international trade."

I had to go up Huron Church the other night and as I was being passed by one speeding transport truck after another (so much for traffic jams) I think I figured out the difference between what private enterprise and the Government want to do at the border.

In my opinion, the Bridge Co. wants to spend as little money as possible but ensure that trucks clear the border as quickly as possible. Government on the other hand wants to spend as much money as possible to build parking lots and could not care if trucks clear the border quickly or not.

Private enterprise has the skills of being a border operator risking its own money and knows the answers. Government has the skills of being a wanna-be border operator gambling our money and thinks it knows the answers.

Think I am kidding. Remember that the Bridge Co. wants to spend money to build 200 booths for speedy Customs clearance and an enhancement project for a replacement bridge at its existing location. Total cost: around $5-600M of their money. With that combination, every vehicle should be moved across the border more quickly and at a minimum cost.

On the other hand, let's consider Governments:

The Ontario Government wants to look at a truck marshalling yard that may never be used somewhere between here and Chatham to "stage" trucks at a cost of $25M+. Not one truck would be moved across the border more quickly after spending all of that money

The Senior Levels and Windsor want to spend $30M for the Tunnel Plaza Improvements to get vehicles off of city streets but not one vehicle would be moved across the border more quickly after spending all of that money

The Schwartz plan as part of its billion dollar vision was to build the multi-million dollar Horseshoe Road which would prevent congestion in times of problems but not one truck would be moved across the border more quickly after spending all of that money.

Don't you see the pattern: the Governments all want to keep vehicles off of City streets but have not figured out that their job is to get them off city streets AND across the border more quickly!

The new bridge---the number of booths is relatively few (my recollection is approximately the same as at the existing bridge) with little room for plaza expansion and now Customs on both sides will have to staff booths all over the place rather than organizing them in a fashion that allows for proper utilization...So will they be building a $3 billion parking lot across the water now.

The Bridge Co. needs to improve its media presence. They keep on saying all of the right things but no one believes them. They keep on solving border problems as they arise but no one gives them credit for it. When they take a position, it is viewed as nothing more than trying to preserve its position rather than as a statement from the best border operator between Canada and the US.

The classic example is the opening of 4 Customs booths at a cost of $2M by the Bridge Co. which solved the back-up problem on Huron Church overnight! Who thanked them? We still see media photos of back-ups, hear talk about congestion and are told that it takes forever to cross the border. They didn't need the Horsehsoe Road or the staging areas. They did not need to spend hundreds of millions. They did not need studies. They fought the US Government. We just needed someone who understood border operations to tell us what needed fixing.

I did a bit of research and found some articles that you might find of interest. It tells it all from a historical perspective. None of this is new. It's the same old stuff. Remember the winter of 2002-3 as an example and compare it with today:

• fighting DRTP, now fighting DRTP's Green Solution
• opposed to the twinned Ambassador Bridge, now opposed to the enhanced bridge
• opposed to the Ring road, now opposed to the DRIC road
• fighting the JMC, now fighting the DRIC
• reacting since no City position on the border, now reacting since no City position on the border
• retaining Estrin, now retaining Estrin
• no friends to help other than the citizens, now no friends
• enemies are the Senior Levels, now the enemies are the Senior Levels and the Bridge Co.
• threatening a lawsuit, now exhausting options

Here are a few articles from the media. If I ran them today, could you tell the difference:

May 24, 1991

• Expanding facilities at the American foot of the Ambassador Bridge is just as good as building a second bridge, government and bridge officials said Thursday.
  
  It's not congestion on the bridge that has tied up traffic for hours at a time, Detroit Mayor Coleman Young said at a news conference. It's lineups at the entrances and exits on both sides that cause the headaches.
  
  SO THE CONSTRUCTION of three new trucking lanes leading off the bridge to a new U.S. Customs inspection area, plus the construction currently under way of a new off-site truck inspection site on the Canadian side, should triple, perhaps quadruple, the traffic capacity on the privately owned bridge.

Oct 24, 1991

• The traffic flows fine through Windsor's two economic arteries to the U.S. The problem, say the presidents of the Ambassador Bridge and the Detroit-Canada Tunnel, comes when vehicles reach the Canada and U.S. customs booths, which act like blood clots stopping the flow.
  
  "I've got 10 inspection booths" on the American side for U.S. Immigration and Naturalization officers, said Detroit-Canada Tunnel Corp. president Don Vuchetich. "And they've never used more than six."
  
  He said reports that the tunnel will reach its capacity in three years aren't true. The tunnel currently averages 800 vehicles an hour in both directions and it has the capacity to handle 2,400, if customs facilities on both the U.S. and Canadian sides didn't cause border gridlock.
  
  Bridge president Dan Stamper said 830 vehicles cross his bridge per hour, but it could handle 5,000 if customs operations could keep the cars and trucks moving. Improvements to the customs operation and plaza on the U.S. side that were started Tuesday could make tieups going into Detroit a thing of the past, he said.

Feb 11, 1993

• Stamper said the Ambassador Bridge will have no trouble absorbing the extra traffic anticipated from casino gambling.
  
  "Our view is we have a lot of roadbed capacity . . . we can take a lot more traffic." Engineering studies show the bridge can handle 5,000 vehicles per hour - a flow well above current levels.
  
  "Windsor and Detroit ought to be taking advantage of being the largest-volume crossing between Canada and the United States," he said.

March 7, 2000

• The federal and provincial governments should get ready to start spending as much as $200 million to rebuild the eight-km stretch of municipal road leading to one of the world's busiest border crossings.
  
  The warning to federal Revenue Minister Martin Cauchon and Deputy Prime Minister Herb Gray came Monday from Ambassador Bridge president Dan Stamper, who had private meetings with the cabinet ministers as they toured Windsor-Detroit border facilities.
  
  In an interview, Stamper said the bridge company is finalizing plans to spend as much as $200 million US of its own on a second span across the Detroit River within the next 10 to 12 years. Work will also start shortly on a new truck ramp on the Canadian side of the bridge that will allow customs inspection booths to be upped from 20 to 30, along with quicker access to roads for both cars and trucks entering Canada, he said.
  
  But that expansion won't contain congestion from an incredible growth of commercial traffic using the bridge without significant improvements in the major connecting link -- Huron Church Road -- said Stamper.

April 25, 2000

• While bridge officials are confident things are going well on the American side, our side has them concerned because of a lack of a plan. The Toronto study should be ready in three weeks.
  
  Although it could be 15 years before a new bridge is built, the flawed Canadian infrastructure needs to be dealt with now to address traffic problems as well as the future needs of a second bridge, he said.
  
  "We need to be prepared," Stamper said. "Without a doubt it's the Canadian side that needs roadwork."

I need a Tylenol. I wonder if Huron Lodge has a few extra.