MONROE, Mich. – The Detroit River is a busy shipping lane, but there weren’t a lot of ports available until now.
On Monday (April 3), Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer toured the Port of Monroe to change that.
The area used to be wooded at the port 10 years ago, but they’ve started to make it into an intermodal shipping channel, and it’s about to grow.
The 1,000-foot James R. Barker was one of the biggest freighters plying the Great Lakes these days.
It holds 700 rail cars worth of iron ore at one time and easily fits into the port of Monroe’s single hold.
It will soon have company in the likes of container ships. Those 40′ metal boxes are the most popular way to move cargo worldwide. And they’ve yet to have a foothold on the Detroit River or the Great Lakes, for that matter.
But Monday, Whitmer toured the facility bringing state money.
“We can work together to bolster Michigan’s supply chain,” said Whitmer. “We know that the impact of supply chain shocks has had a tremendous impact on our economy.”
In the 2023 bipartisan budget, there’s about $15 million in state funds to add another boat hold, railroad spurs to allow containers and another $5 million in federal funds to put in a customs scanning facility.
The idea is to move freight from the location out to the St. Lawrence Seaway.
Paul Lamarre runs the Port of Monroe.
“Now Michigan will be in that business, and it will ensure that goods can travel to and from our region as expeditiously and economically as possible,” said Lamarre.
The development was long overdue to Anderson Economic Group Chief Economist Patrick Anderson.
“Building our port infrastructure has a high probability of helping us, and I’m glad the federal government is finally putting some money in after paying federal taxes,” said Anderson. “We’re supporting infrastructure in other parts of the country.”
Other federal money is coming in from the infrastructure bill, and Lamarre says the east and west coast ports certainly didn’t want this to happen.
He says you won’t see those monster container ships there. But smaller ships on those waters.