Examining The DRIC Plaza

The Bridge Company people really have to be laughing themselves silly at the shenanigans of the Federal Government to try and force them to sell out cheaply.

The DRIC Bridge location at a cost of $1.2B makes its tolls uncompetitive while it only hooks up to one Interstate in the US. It uproots hundreds of families and businesses in Delray and now in Sandwich too, even though it is a mere "handful" on our side. Tell that to the 30 or so families!

But let me focus on the Plaza in this BLOG.

What seems to have been designed seems so foolish to a layman like me. The people at the Bridge Co. who actually develop and operate plazas must be shaking their heads in wonderment.

In case you have forgotten, the Government hired a consulting firm, Wilbur Smith, to do an investment grade traffic analysis of the border. My bet will be that the criteria for the study will be such that the consultant will confirm the overly-optimistic traffic numbers used by DRIC. I remember one of the Ministers at the DRIC Press Conference talking about capacity being reached in the 2015 time period as DRIC predicted. Obviously then, the end result of that consultant's report is totally predictable.

For the sake of argument, let's assume that this is correct and that the final traffic numbers will be what DRIC predicts so that P3 investors will be falling over themselves to bid for the new crossing.

In passing, I know that this will be difficult for you to do, dear reader, since Minister Stockwell Day gave examples of how the traffic would be moved through the border more quickly. One way is through the use of Nexus cards (he used the American Express line of "Don't leave home without it") and then there is e-Manifests (e-Manifests "will require the pre-arrival transmission of cargo, crew and conveyance information for all modes of transportation.)

In other words, thickening of the border and backups should be minimized within a few years, four years for e-Manifests, since it will be easier for Customs to pre-clear the vast majority of daily commuters and truck traffic through the use of technology.

Even now, the BridgeCompany preprocessing Centre in Detroit has reduced significantly the number of secondary Customs inspections at the Bridge. Presumably, that should mean that we do not need a whole bunch of new lanes across the River since capacity will not be a problem any longer. Vehicles, especially trucks, will in effect be pre-cleared through Customs away from the border and therefore only a few vehicles will be stopped.

However, let us forget about this illogical position being put forward by the Government. Let us also assume that Wilbur Smith will confirm a huge increase in traffic that DRIC has presented to us so far notwithstanding that they have actually reduced their volume projections several times and that the actual traffic bears no relationship to what they have said.

If one looks at the photographic rendering above of and reads the material with respect to the new DRIC Plaza, several things jump out:

• when one looks at its location, it is surrounded by the Brighton Beach power station, the Hydro One transformer station, the West Windsor power plant and the Nemak automotive plant as well as parkland. It must mean that all of this Plaza is capable of handling all of the traffic that all of these expert consultants can foresee


• how easily can the plaza be expanded


• who in their right mind would build a bridge and plaza surrounded by these obvious security risks when there is another location that does not have these risks. Are they just inviting trouble. Do they want another "unique" security risk like the Tunnel?


• there are 29 Customs booths for cars and trucks in the new plaza


• as laid out, the 29 booths completely fill out the width of the Plaza so that it appears that more booths cannot be added


• the new plaza has 132 acres, slightly larger than that required, according to DRIC, that would have wiped out a good part of Sandwich if a new bridge was built at the Ambassador Bridge location where they said 100-120 acres was needed. What a remarkable co-incidence.


• Of that 132 acres, 43 are buffer and 5 are for stormwater management. Space taken for secondary truck inspection is huge, about equivalent to half of the Incoming Customs area it seems even though fewer trucks will be inspected in future with the new technology (The Bridge Co.'s pre-processing area in Detroit has already cut dramatically the number of vehicles going to secondary insopection)


• I would be shocked if the actual space required for Customs' purposes in the new plaza is substantially more than what is needed now at the bridge.


• if the plaza is designed for traffic volumes for the next 30 years or so, is the plaza too small for future growth beyond 30 years? If so, then what?

The conclusion that I draw from all of this is pretty simple. The huge volume of traffic as predicted by DRIC and which will be confirmed by Wilbur Smith can be handled in a Plaza with 29 Customs booths that cannot be expanded in future easily and which seems to be unable to accommodate additional Customs booths and has unacceptable risks nearby that invite trouble.

There is a recent precedent about errors in plaza design: the Blue Water Bridge US plaza. In fact over $400M has to be spent to fix it up. Of course, another change was made in the new design proposed:

• "MDOT presents new plan for plaza
  
  By NICHOLAS DESHAIS, Times Herald, June 23, 2008
  
  A representative from the Michigan Department of Transportation will present the newly revised plan for the Blue Water Bridge Plaza expansion before many Blue Water Area elected officials tonight...
  
  The "footprint" of the project recently was reduced from 65 to 57 acres, sparing more than 20 houses from demolition but relegating them to an "island" surrounded by heavy traffic and a fortified port of entry."

If I am the Bridge Company Owner, I am sitting in my office scratching my head and wondering what is going on. You see, dear reader, the Ambassador Bridge already has 29 incoming Customs booths on the Canadian side, the same number as the new Plaza is supposed to have! The numbers for actual traffic seem to be significantly less than the DRIC projections based on actual results and the existing Plaza can handle even more Customs booths.

Seriously, who needs a new plaza and a new bridge?

Moreover, he has to be trying to figure out what these people are thinking with respect to traffic when the complaints are due to border "thickening" which has nothing to do with his operations. Rather they are the concerns of Customs of both the US and Canadian Governments and which will be dealt with programs such as e-Manifest, FAST and Nexus.

A suggestion: if you are a Government person whose object is to terrify the Bridge Company, don't make them laugh first!