Who Is In Control AT MTO

I received an email the other day from a reader informing me about a recent Request for Quotation posted on the Ontario Ministry of Transportation website.

It was issued by the Windsor Borders Initiatives Implementation Group. You know them, the BIIG people set up by the Premier back in September 2005. I assume that the posting group are part of the 41 people assisting Minister Cansfield in Windsor.

I wonder though who is in charge, who knows what is going on. After reading this BLOG , someone may suggest that dropping a few of these people might be a good idea. They obviously have too much time on their hands to dream up ridiculous ideas.

Steve Salmons where are you??? Stop worrying about private enterprise so much and keep these people under control. They are going to spend us into another financial mess. They may also wreck the border for us in Windsor by giving US Customs an excuse not to clear trucks quickly any more for heaven's sake. MTO may give them an out---a truck marshalling yard where trucks can idle forever!

Their idea is dumb...it relieves the pressure on US Customs to staff the customs booths fully and clear trucks promptly. They would know, if the MTO idea was adopted, that if they chose not to staff the booths, Windsor would not suffer (although our industry would). The trucks would be kept out of town, away from Windsor as drivers lost money and industry fumed.

Here is how the project is described:

• "The purpose of this project is to undertake the necessary traffic modelling and planning/preliminary design study to determine the potential size of the truck marshalling yard. The area of the study will include the Highway 401 corridor generally between Windsor and Chatham.
  
  The project will establish the footprint of a truck marshalling yard to serve the Windsor-Detroit Gateway through modelling, using existing and anticipated truck volumes and a number of different delay scenarios in the Windsor Gateway. The anticipated location of any future marshalling yard is the Highway 401 corridor, up to 65 kilometres east of Windsor.
  
  This project "Truck Marshalling Yard" is one of the major steps jointly announcement by Canada and Ontario on April 21, 2005 to improve the movements of goods and people at the Windsor-Detroit Gateway, under the "Let’s Get Windsor-Essex Moving Strategy". The joint commitment involved the needs and feasibility study for the establishment of a truck marshalling facility on Highway 401 in the Windsor-Essex Region."

I thought this was odd since I had thought the truck marshalling concept had died a long time ago. It was not needed any longer. Obviously I was wrong. In bureaucracy-world, when only taxpayer money is at stake, nothing ever ends even if it is no longer needed. It's true, there it was in April 2005 except now there did not appear to be an EOI. They were trying to figure out the size now:

• "Expression of interest followed by a request for proposals can begin for a truck marshalling facility on Highway 401 in the Windsor-Essex Region;
  
  Will identify need and potential uses for a marshalling yard; legislative changes to be considered to support its operation and potential site locations
  
  Stakeholder consultations will include truckers and private sector proponents of similar facilities in Windsor area."

So let me get this straight---Over a year and a half after the idea was proposed, someone out of the blue decided to move on this project. Perhaps it took that long to change the name from "staging" area to "marshalling" area! I do not remember hearing a big demand for it either recently. This is after the backups on Huron Church Road have virtually been eliminated when the Bridge Co. opened up a few more truck booths.

This is the "staging area" idea that was talked about so much 4 years ago when there were backups here. As described by the BIIG folks, it is to be used primarily to manage queues during periods of short-term delays and secondarily as a marshalling yard during periods of long-term delay.

The BIIG folk are also going to issue an RFI--request for information--to solicit private sector advice informaation regarding the development of a truck marshalling yard.

Someone must have been talking recently to Ann Arquette of "Border Gateways it seems. It sounds like a variation of what she has proposed. Here is how Today's Trucking describes her and her idea:

• "Most “official” folks say there’s no simple way to more efficiently funnel some 6,000 trucks a day across the Ambassador Bridge...
  
  If you believe a solution to this mess is years away, I beg to differ. So does a feisty young woman, a former Canada Customs and Revenue Agency officer named Ann Arquette. Her company, Border Gateways, has a plan to reduce delays that could be up and running within 10 months. Arquette wants to create a staging area—“a virtual gateway,” she calls it—off the 401 about 20 kilometres east of Windsor, where all trucks would stop and prepare to clear customs.
  
  At Arquette’s facility, trucks would be staged and released in an ordered way so as to eliminate the present chaos on Windsor streets. Security along the 20-km trip to the actual border would be managed by video cameras and radio-frequency devices that would sound an alarm if a truck went off-route.
  
  Arquette’s facility also would be designed to accommodate drivers. Instead of having to use one of the 15 portable johns the province of Ontario has spread out along that last bit of Hwy. 401, drivers could have proper washrooms and showers. In fact, it would make sense to combine Arquette’s staging area with a proper truck stop, a point not lost on her. Arquette has options on 150 acres of land and she’s got her site designed. Financing is in place and the area’s best contractor is ready to pave 50 acres or more. Her small team is good to go.
  
  All she needs is a nod from the provincial and federal governments, but so far they’re not listening. Nor, it seems, is the trucking industry. Only the folks at the U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection seem to be responding. The Yanks actually think her idea might work at the U.S./Mexico border crossing in El Paso, Texas."

You see, the Americans are interested since it serves THEIR purpose, not OURS! And if Ann has all of this in place, why hasn't she done it yet? Simple---there is no need and it can never pay its way as I shall demonstrate.

Let me ask this simply---ARE THE BIIG PEOPLE NUTS?

For heaven's sake the Province is in a financial pinch--just ask the Premier--and they want to do this. It will be on a site at least 20-40 acres in size and will cost tens of millions to develop and may never be used! How many times would it have been in use during the last year or so? ZERO TIMES!

Who is going to set it up, pay for it and maintain it? How are they going to get their money back for this if every truck passes them by since there are no back-ups? Who would use it? If truckers were forced to go there and pay a fee, our border crossing becomes less competitive with that of Sarnia which would not have such a fee.

The Ontario Trucking Association talked about this idea several years ago. Their objections voiced in the Star:

• In the very near future, unless you're a pre-registered shipper using a pre-registered trucking company, delivering pre-registered goods with a completed manifest and pre-registered with U.S. Customs, they're not going to let you anywhere near the border," said Doug Switzer of the Ontario Trucking Association. "A pre- processing centre would not have a place in that world
• We also question the mandatory requirement to pass through the system, how that would work on a practical basis and who will pay the ongoing operational costs of the centre.

If the Government wants a staging area so badly , then pave over the 20 acres of land that the Bridge Co. already has set up at the newly designed off ramp of Highway 4 and the 401. It is already a pre-processing Customs area. It is six kilometers west of 401/402 intersection and can serve Windsor, Sarnia and Fort Erie, not just Windsor!

In passing, the maximum distance of the facility from Windsor has been arbitrarily set at up to 65 kilometres east of Windsor to eliminate the Bridge Co. facility! The way it works now, if the document is filled out at that centre, by the time the truck gets to Windsor, the paperwork is done so there is no waiting for a driver. How long will the wait be with a centre so close to Windsor?

Don't those guys in Toronto and elsewhere in their ivory towers understand that the object of the exercise is to CLEAR vehicles quickly not stage them. That's where Gridlock Sam also went wrong too on his Horseshoe Road. Oooops I forgot, they are bureaucrats. They've never run a border operation except on paper and in theory. That 's why they need to get the "advice" from the private sector to teach them about reality!

It's like the $30 million that the Senior levels want to waste on the Tunnel Plaza Improvements when traffic is tanking and there are cheaper ways to solve the problem. Come on Steve, time to review that project as well as this one!

No matter, taxpayers have money to burn! Let's spend it on this, the Tunnel and DRIC. Who wants a road to the border anyway.

And by the way, is the land that Ann mentioned, the 150 acres, still available or is the land now to be used by Project Ice Track for their arena?