After 25 years of planning, seven years of construction and months of delays, the first trucks will roll off the Gordie Howe Bridge on Monday.
There will be some multi-billion dollar shipments passing through Windsor-Detroit. tunnel, where the bridge will help to get to their destination faster – saving time and money.
“There’s a great opportunity here in terms of dollars, but also in terms of what our future looks like, embedded in that one bridge,” said Moshe Lander, an economics professor at Concordia University who studies international trade.
But how much time and money are we talking about?
Here’s what you need to know.
850,000 hours per year saved
The existing Blue Water Bridge, Ambassador Bridge and Detroit-Windsor Tunnel have supported large amounts of commerce for decades. But they’re close to the point, which Canadian Trucking Alliance CEO Stephen Laskowski says has led to traffic jams.
He says the lines of shops selling goods on both sides of the Ambassador Bridge have grown longer over the years. And the route that leads to that crossing on the Windsor side also takes drivers through a dozen or so stops.
But with three capacity lanes to each side, Gordie Howe is expected to speed things up considerably.
The new bridge is expected to take 44.5 percent of commercial traffic through the Windsor-Detroit corridor, according to a January filing from the US Department of Homeland Security establishing the route as an official port of entry.
The opening of the new Gordie Howe Bridge is widely expected to change the way goods worth billions of dollars and millions of travelers cross between Canada and the US. CBC’s Emma Loop reports.
The Gordie Howe route also directly connects two major highway networks in America and Canada – the 75 freeways in the US and the 400 series freeways in Ontario.
While the new bridge can only shave a few minutes for each trip, that time adds up. It is estimated that it will save some truck drivers 850,000 hours per year during waiting times.
Laskowski’s organization estimates that the new bridge will save trucking companies between $20,000 and $100,000 a month, depending on the size of their fleet.
Lower tolls on the Gordie Howe compared to the Ambassador Bridge will shave a few bucks off those costs, according to Laskowski, while less time spent idling on the road will mean savings on fuel and wages.
$1B in daily trading
It is given a third of all trades What happens between the US and Canada passes through this tunnel, the bridge can have serious benefits for the economy.
Canada and the US already export approx $1 billion a day on the Windsor-Detroit corridor, according to an estimate from Invest WindsorEssex, making it the busiest international border crossing point in North America.
“It’s amazing,” Lander said.
As is the case with automated manufacturing, parts often cross the border many times before the finished product ends up being sold in any country.
That includes any time savings from crossing a single border, said Sandy Baruah, CEO of the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce.
Any delay from a slow crossing could hold up supplies at factories, Barah said, so another storage bridge would prevent the delay from having a domino effect.
“In today’s highly competitive global market, any efficiency that can be achieved is a big deal.”
And if businesses aren’t spending as much on trucking products that could mean they aren’t raising prices as quickly, Lander says it could mean “inflation is kept under the tabs.”
Besides, Lander says it’s an important sign for businesses of how important the trade relationship between Canada and the US is and the fact that it’s not going anywhere – politics aside.
Despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s continued threats of tariffs — including a recent 50 percent tariff on a variety of Canadian products — Lander says the two countries’ stance means trade is not an option.
“They’re in our yard, we’re in their yard, it’s not going.”
$6.4B price tag
Despite the benefits, Canada will have to start paying back the high cost of the bridge.
Although the bridge is jointly owned by the governments of Canada and Michigan, Canada paid the entire $6.4 billion cost of its construction. But that hasn’t stopped the debate over who should get the money once the bridge is open.
In February, US President Donald Trump threatening to block the opening of the bridge until his country is “compensated in full for everything we have given them,” in a diplomatic note lamenting Canada.
The bridge opened for the first time last month was suspended at the request of the United Statesto solve a few problems.
The two countries have reached a new agreement to open the bridge to travelers from July 27 under modified terms of where the revenue goes.
For the first 15 years under that agreement, toll revenue will be used to pay for the bridge’s maintenance and operating costs. The rest of the money will be split, with Canada getting half and the other half going to an economic development fund managed by the US government.
A proposed deal regarding the opening of the Gordie Howe International Bridge linking Windsor, Ont., to Detroit, has been pulled amid rising tariff threats from US President Donald Trump.
The original 2012 agreement between the countries would have seen Canada collect all tolls and use the revenue to pay off its debt. Only when Canada’s debt is taken care of does Michigan begin to share the revenue.
Carney’s comments before the text of the agreement was made public led to confusion about the money-sharing agreement and criticism from opposition parties.
The Prime Minister apologized on Thursday for the confusion but said that, in any case, the terms of the agreement would have “very little impact on the economy as a whole” because the revenue would be small in the first few years until traffic increases.
