Southwest Detroit is nearly 20 square miles, bordered by two rivers, three major highways, and the busiest border crossing in North America.
Very soon, it will be busier as we approach the opening of the Gordie Howe International Bridge.
“The start of this project goes all the way back to the year 2000,” Heather Grondin, chief relations officer for the Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority, said on Wednesday (Sept. 24).
“We’ve been working together, Canada, the U.S., Ontario, Michigan, Windsor, Detroit, have been working together for 25 years to bring this bridge to this stage,” Grondin said. “All of the partners have been working together with the really dedicated goal of getting this project to the point it’s at today.”
The $6.4 billion bridge – $4.6 billion USD – broke ground in 2018 and is being built by the authority, with financing provided by the Canadian government.
“Overall, we’re at about 98% complete, which leaves us about 2% of work left to do,” Grondin said. “Of course, on a project of this size, 2% is still a lot of work to do.”
It will compete with the privately owned, 96-year-old Ambassador Bridge, which opened in 1927.
It is one of a handful of privately owned border crossings in the United States.
If you’ve driven through Southwest over the last seven years, you’ve noticed the increase in 18-wheelers that thunder through neighborhoods like Del Rey.
According to a recent study by the city of Detroit, more than 1,000 trucks pass through the stretch of Livernois between Vernor and Fort every day, despite a current city ordinance banning them from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.
Unlike the Ambassador Bridge, the Howe Bridge will provide direct access to I-75 and I-96 in Michigan, as well as Highway 3 in Ontario, without cutting through city streets.
“This will allow for the entire corridor to move more efficiently, for trucks to move off of those local streets and move through I-75 more quickly and get to their destination on the other side of the border,” Grondin said.
Grondin said the bridge will be completed by the end of the year, but she stopped short of providing an exact date for the bridge to formally open.
The Bridge Authority is currently coordinating with U.S. Border Control agencies to hand over the U.S. ports.
In a time when relations between the US and Canada have not been strained, she says the partnership between the countries to complete this bridge has been rock-solid.
“It’s a really good example of collaboration and the positive outcomes of working together to identify a solution to the problem of moving goods through this corridor,” Grondin said. “It’s been a great relationship.”