How A Kangaroo May Save Sean O'Dell

Poor Sean O'Dell. It is getting worse and worse for him. His words in the Detroit media may become a serious credibility problem for him with his superiors. He needs my help. After all he is Executive Director, Windsor Gateway Project:

• "Moroun will lose some traffic, but there's more than enough business to go around."

Should he have said anything until he got back his investment grade traffic survey. Oh I forgot, it will not be revealed until a year after it was supposed to have been completed. We will not see the numbers until June, 2009. In this way, he cannot be accused of not disclosing information.

I just wonder though if there have been any interim reports. I will try to find out with my Federal Freedom of Information application.

In any event, there is another news story that will make dismal reading for Sean and the investors who may want to invest in the DRIC Project:

• "US-Canada toll traffic down again - Jan 2009 16% below Jan 2008
  
  US-Canadian toll crossing traffic was 16.2% lower in January than the previous corresponding period (pcp) or Jan 2008 - 2.31m vs 2.76m. This follows December numbers 11% down. Truck traffic, the highest yielding category, is down the most - 443k trucks Jan 09 vs 636k Jan 08, 30.4% down.
  
  The December drop in truck numbers was 12.6% and for the year 2008 vs 2007 9.2% down.
  
  Biggest drop in the January 09 numbers compiled by the Public Border Operators Association was at the Ambassador Bridge (privately held) where Jan 09 traffic was 461k vs 649k last year, a 29% drop. Truck traffic at the Ambassador was 158k Jan 09 vs 257k Jan 08, a drop of 39%.
  
  Blue Water Bridge upriver of the Ambassador also reports major declines in traffic - down 19.4% in January overall and 30.1% in trucks from 133k to 93k this Jan.
  
  Other Jan 09/Jan08 percentage drops in total traffic are:
  
  - Detroit-Windsor Tunnel 4%
  
  - Lewiston-Queenston 18.7%
  
  - Ogdensburg 16%
  
  - Peace 12.6%
  
  - Rainbow 12.2%
  
  - Sault St Marie 14.1%
  
  - Seaway 4.5%
  
  - Thousand Is 13.3%
  
  - Whirlpool Rapids 1.5%
  
  Declines in traffic are attributed to the sharply reduced activity in automobile manufacturing, a major driver of truck trips, reduced tourism and commuting, and increased border crossing hassles especially into the US - a delayed implementation of more intrusive measures following the 9/11/2001 attacks."

The ONLY way that a P3 DRIC bridge---or a P3 DRIC road--- could survive financially is by Government edict forcing traffic away from all the other crossings thereby bankrupting them! Or by Government subsidies thereby helping to bankrupt taxpayers.

The US Infrastructure program will not help for the US side project either:

From the Buffalo News

• "But state officials have cautioned that tight federal guidelines will push off many signature-style projects, such as the Peace Bridge replacement span, because they are not far enough along in the design or approval phase."

The same would apply to our project.

From the New York Times which specifically looked at our project:

• "Big Ideas, Grand Plans, Modest Budgets
  
  There is no shortage of big dreams or grand schemes as the United States struggles to rebuild itself for the 21st century. But many of the most ambitious projects in the country — a representative sample of which are listed below — stand to get only modest amounts of money, if any, from the economic stimulus package that Congress approved on Friday.
  
  From a public works perspective, the $789 billion stimulus package is unlikely to transform the physical fabric of the nation as the New Deal did when it built hundreds of airports, tens of thousands of bridges, and hundreds of thousands of buildings and miles of roads.
  
  The final plan devotes more than $100 billion to public works projects — but that is only a fraction of the $2.2 trillion that the American Society of Civil Engineers says is needed to put the nation’s infrastructure into a state of good repair. And much of it is likely to be spent on small needs sprinkled throughout the 50 states — repaving a road here, painting a bridge there — rather than on bigger, more transformative, but slower projects. To put the scope of the spending into perspective, think of it this way: the bill will devote about $50 billion to transportation projects, which is about what the federal government authorizes for transportation every year. The money will be welcome, but hardly enough to transform transportation. And since many local governments have curtailed their own construction programs to save money, in some places the stimulus may end up simply keeping public works at their pre-recession pace...
  
  Californians want finally to bring high-speed rail to the United States. Planners want to build bridges to Canada from Detroit, a tunnel for trucks to the Port of Miami and a new one for trains between New York and New Jersey. Transit systems want to expand, ports want more capacity and freight train companies want to untangle bottlenecks on the tracks.
  
  But even with the biggest push for infrastructure spending in years, most of these big-ticket projects are unlikely to get very far from the stimulus alone. Some may not qualify for aid at all. Others will get modest down payments, which they hope will be enough to keep them going."

From Crains Detroit:

• "Neither of the Detroit River crossing projects says they're considering stimulus funding.
  
  The privately-funded $1 billion effort adding a second span to the Ambassador Bridge and the $1.5 billion effort by MDOT and Canadian government agencies to build a new bridge in Detroit's Delray neighborhood both plan to use bonds to pay for construction and then use toll revenue to repay the bonds."

Sean is in serious trouble. He is making Ministers look really foolish, especially the Minister of Finance. Mind you, they are doing a good job of it on their own by pushing for P3s when that market is dying.

However, don't say that I will not help out. I will merely draw his attention to how Australian politicians got themselves out of a mess. If he plays it right, he could get a big promotion:

BLOG, Wednesday, April 11, 2007, “How A Kangaroo Can Save Canada's Economy." http://windsorcityon.blogspot.com/2007/04/how-kangaroo-can-save-canadas-economy.html

If Sean does not listen, well I would expect that a chapter in the revised edition of the Danish Professor's book "Megaprojects and Risk: An anatomy of Ambition" may be devoted to him! Professor Bent Flyvbjerg should devote considerable space to this Megaproject run amuk formula as it applies to DRIC:

• "In fact, there seemed to be a formula at work: (underestimated costs) + (overestimated revenues) + (undervalued environmental impacts) + (overvalued economic development effects) = (project approval)