Howe Bridge study calls plan an epic waste
Expert questions why cheaper option ignored
Through years of bickering over Canada’s planned new bridge between Windsor and Detroit, attention has inevitably settled on Manuel (Matty) Moroun, the pugnacious owner of the private Ambassador Bridge.
Forbes magazine has called the 91-year-old — who fought long and hard to block the Canadian government-funded span — the “troll under the bridge.”
But a new analysis from a respected trade expert — albeit funded by Moroun’s company — suggests such personality questions have overshadowed a more basic issue.
The federal project is an epic waste of money that will cost Canadian taxpayers up to $180 million a year for decades, when a far-cheaper, private-sector alternative is already in the works, says the study by Eric Miller, a global fellow at Washington’s Woodrow Wilson Center.
Moroun’s company plans to build a replacement of its existing span at no cost to government.
“This looks like a path of financial folly,” said Miller, a former vice-president of the Business Council of Canada and trade official at Canada’s Washington embassy.
“In this age of fiscal restraint, you’ve got an investor who’s willing to pay for the whole bridge,” he said in an interview. “This feels like high school: ‘We don’t like (the Ambassador’s owners) so we’re not going to do anything with them.’ ”
But an academic who has followed the bridge saga closely dismissed the report as paid promotion of Moroun’s interests, and said it ignores the national importance of Canada owning a route across the Detroit River.
“This is too strategic to leave under the control of one individual, who is not even Canadian,” said Alfie Morgan, a University of Windsor professor emeritus of business.
“What is the price of national control over such a strategic asset?”
Mark Butler, spokesman for the Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority that manages the project, said studies show the Canadian structure will be cost-effective, and growth in traffic will make two new, wider bridges a necessity.
“The Gordie Howe International Bridge project is essential for Canada’s economic prosperity,” Butler said of the span, named after the late Detroit Red Wings star.
Not at issue is that the current, four-lane Ambassador Bridge over the Detroit River — a conduit for 30 per cent of U.S.-Canada truck trade that funnels traffic through clogged Windsor streets — is not up to the job.
The federal government has been planning a replacement since 2004, now projected to cost $5.7 billion.
That includes the bridge, customs plazas on both sides and a link to Interstate 75, as well as 30 years of operation and maintenance.
The Morouns’ Detroit International Bridge Company — unique in its private ownership of a major border crossing — has opposed the project from the start.
That opposition has involved a series of court actions, a Michigan plebiscite it promoted and a $5-million PR campaign.
Former prime minister Stephen Harper, meanwhile, called the bridge his country’s most important infrastructure undertaking and vowed in 2012 that “this bridge is going to get done, whatever battles lie ahead.”
Moroun has, in fact, mostly lost those battles.
But last year the Liberal government surprisingly gave the green light for his own, privately funded replacement for the Ambassador Bridge.
Like the Howe Bridge, it would have six lanes, meaning the two proposed new links would together triple current capacity.
Transportation Minister Marc Garneau — whose office referred inquires about Miller’s paper to the bridge authority — has said both bridges will be needed to handle an increasing flow of cars and trucks.
But in the paper commissioned by Moroun’s company, Miller notes that traffic across the existing Ambassador Bridge actually dropped 44 per cent between 2000 and 2017, as manufacturing migrated to lower-cost places such as Mexico, and security at the border tightened.
At current vehicle volumes, and applying earlier, lower cost estimates, the net cost of financing the bridge would range from $104 million to $184 million a year for as many as six decades, depending on whether tolls were increased or not, Miller’s paper concludes.
“Canadian taxpayers are looking at parting with vast sums of money,” he says.