MDOT Embarrassment

It must be tough being the Director of MDOT.

It is bad enough when your employees and your FHWA partner mess up badly in front of a Michigan Senate hearing and you have to come in and try and salvage it. However, when the Senator claims that your Department has said that a bridge is not needed now and may not be needed until after the DRIC study time period in 2035, then it makes your pro-DRIC position seem totally ludicrous!

• “DRIC's traffic projections are inflated and unrealistic. Border traffic at the Blue Water Bridge in Port Huron, the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel and the Ambassador Bridge has fallen every year since 1999. Counter to DRIC projections, traffic has declined from 1999-2007 by 52% at the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel, by 26% at the Ambassador Bridge, and by 12% at the Blue Water.
  
  If DRIC cannot accurately predict traffic levels from 2004-08, then its 30-year projections are completely baseless. Even with these inflated traffic projections, MDOT testified before my committee that a new span would not be needed until between 2025-35. This gives us plenty of time to address border bridge capacity in the future if the situation warrants it.”

But if that is not bad enough to make you want to gag, then there are all kinds of interesting documents they are buried in the MDOT archives that can come back to haunt you. Here is one that I found. It was prepared by the Corradino Group Inc., URS Canada Inc., the US and Canadian DRIC consultants and a Michigan Department of Transportation employee. I cannot tell exactly when it was prepared but it would have been prior to March 2003 I believe.

• The Detroit-Windsor border
  
  As the saying goes, “There’s good news and bad news.” The good news is that the Detroit Region benefits enormously from having good connections to Canada, its No. 1 world trade partner, by way of the Ambassador Bridge and the Detroit-Windsor tunnel. The bad news is that these crossings have reached a point that congestion, of trucks in particular, has become a major problem on each side of the border…
  
  The four governmental entities responsible for surface transportation across the border between Southwest Ontario and Southeast Michigan -- Transport Canada, the Ontario Ministry of Transportation, the U.S. Federal Highway Administration and the Michigan Department of Transportation – created a Bi-National Partnership to jointly fund and oversee a study to determine if, when and where a new crossing is needed and, if so, to define the type of crossing, i.e., bridge or tunnel, and the number of lanes that will be required to support traffic in 2030 and beyond.
  
  In the first phase of the bi-national study, all modes of surface transportation were evaluated, including marine, rail and transit. While these latter modes can provide border-crossing capacity, none can provide enough capacity to put off the need for a new roadway crossing.
  
  The initial feasibility study concluded that at least four additional lanes for roadway traffic will be needed by 2030 and that six lanes should be constructed to accommodate traffic through at least 2050. It also said the crossing should be built as quickly as possible within the constraints of the laws and regulations of the two nations. And, while there may be some debate as to just when the existing roadway system will reach a level of congestion so critical that cross-border travel will be unacceptably slow, especially for trucks, there is no disagreement that dependence upon two crossings, each 70 years old, is unwise. The need for another crossing is further accentuated when issues other than congestion, like safety and security, are considered…
  
  It is likely that a new crossing recommended by the study will be operating by 2012 or before…
  
  In the meantime, there are a number of opportunities to address the near-term congestion-causing issues:
  
  · The Ambassador Bridge Gateway Project to improve the U.S. connection between the bridge and I-75.
  
  · Increased education and use of the NEXUS and FAST processing systems.
  
  · Additional border processing staff and facilities.

There are a number of comments to make but one other item was also mentioned that bears a remarkable resemblance to the DRIC road/Greenlink/Windsor WALTS road/Schwartz Road:

• “Ambassador Bridge Parkway -- This proposal is for a separate controlled-access road connection along Essex Terminal Railway right-of-way between Ambassador Bridge and a new border processing area at E.C. Row Expressway/Huron Church Road; this proposal also includes improvements to the Huron Church/Talbot Road corridor from E.C. Row Expressway to Highway 401; this proposal is located within the Twinned Ambassador Bridge corridor.

DUH…it’s the way to connect the DRIC road to the Ambassador Bridge today in case Eddie forgot!

Just look at some of the things that were said back then and compare with today. It is obvious already that in this short period of time that the DRIC comments with respect to the border crossing are very suspect:

• These crossings have reached a point of congestion.... not since the Bridge Company opened up new booths



• DRIC's time period is 2030 and yet MDOT says the new bridge may not be necessary until 2035


• It is completely absurd to argue that the DRIC Bridge should start operating in 2012 if it is not needed until 2035. It and other border crossings could go broke requiring massive Government subsidies


• what the Enhancement Project offers meets the requirements until after 2050


• if four or six lanes are all that are needed and what was this nonsense at the Cropsey hearing about 14 or 15 lanes


• a big point is made about the age of the Bridge yet impediments are being placed to build a new one


• security and redundancy are eliminated as issues if the Enhancement Project is constructed.

The point that I am making is that the anti-Bridge Company story keeps changing and the MDOT Director is stuck trying to support it. Every time the Bridge Company proves something that is said by DRIC is wrong, the MDOT/DRIC story changes to something more extreme.

In fact, based on the Cropsey hearing, a strong argument can be made that the three "near-term" solutions make the building of a DRIC bridge absurd. It is not the number of lanes that is the issue but rather Customs clearance. There seems to be little recognition of how technology will allow the processing of vehicles much more quickly to effectively increase capacity at a minimal cost.

In the end, does it really matter what the facts are. It's politics. It is money. And definitely it is lawsuits.

I am still waiting to see what Senator Cropsey's cryptic statement means. I wonder if the MDOT Director is waiting too:

• "He claims agreements from previous decades -- that precede the DRIC study -- called for joint completion of the state's ongoing $230-million gateway project in Detroit to improve access to Moroun's bridge, completion of the twin span and improvements to Huron Church Road.
  
  "What we are saying is let's just finish what's been started -- and everybody agreed to -- and then look at the traffic flow and see if the capacity is there in earnest before we get into a new (DRIC) crossing," Cropsey said."