By The Numbers

There was a big debate at the Cropsey hearings in Michigan about who is right and who is wrong on traffic projections for the border volume.

We do know that DRIC has had to change its projections several times already and in each case the numbers have gone down. The Canadian Federal Government is undertaking an investment grade traffic survey but we have not yet seen those results.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could see the future and determine what the truth is? Unfortunately, we cannot do so but perhaps we have an alternative way of gauging who might be correct.

I found this recently. It is a Press Release dated May 18, 2001 titled “Governments partnering to ease border congestion.” It was the beginning of the Bi-National Partnership.

It is instructive to understand that the purpose of the study was

• “improving traffic flow at the Windsor-Detroit border.”

It was not security. It was not redundancy. According to FHW A

• "All of the partners are cooperating fully in this effort to modernize this very important border crossing."

There was nothing there about building a new bridge and plaza a mile down the road from the existing crossing. It was about traffic flow and modernization.

The reason it was not being discussed was because the Ambassador Gateway project was being negotiated at this exact time with the Bridge Company and it was supposed to handle about twice the existing traffic on its own, without the need for a new crossing at all. Moreover the parties knew that the Bridge Company's Project was designed to accommodate a second bridge at the existing crossing of up to 8 lanes which would make 12 in all, more than enough to handle traffic volumes many years into the future. The Bridge Company was proposing to build it too at its expense.

Given all of that knowledge frankly, one has to ask the legitimate question why was there ever a need for a second bridge. The answer clearly has to be there was none. The real objective of what has happened for the last 8 years is action by the Governments to force the Bridge Company to sell out at a cheap price so that the Governments can P3 the border!

Back to traffic volumes, this comment struck me as startling as part of a backup material:

• “Recent studies have confirmed that the Windsor-Detroit border crossings and their associated links are experiencing congestion and transportation capacity problems.
  
  The Ontario Ministry of Transportation's Southwest Ontario Frontier International Gateway study concluded that the two-lane Detroit-Windsor tunnel connecting urban streets in downtown Detroit and Windsor is close to capacity, and that the four-lane Ambassador Bridge and its connecting link, Huron Church Road/Highway 3 in Windsor, will reach capacity around 2010.”

As everyone knows, this projection is completely incorrect and inaccurate.

The study referred to was one done in 1998, only 10 years ago. Can you imagine if a new bridge had been built based on those traffic projections? It would be broke today and so would the other crossings in Windsor because they would be all competing for declining traffic. Moreover, the Ambassador Bridge is only between 50 to 60% capacity today.

They said that

• “More than 75,000 vehicles use the southeast Michigan/southwest Ontario border crossings each day.”

That number today is less than 50,000 vehicles based on September numbers.

So much for expert traffic projections by Governments.

Given what is going on in manufacturing and the automobile industry in particular as well as the meltdown in the financial markets, no one can provide a rational justification for the unnecessary DRIC Megaproject and the wasting of taxpayer dollars. With the new Senior Federal Governments on both sides of the river, it is to put DRIC out of its misery. And ours.