FORT ERIE, Ont. (Feb. 14, 2005) — The group that owns the Ambassador Bridge at the Windsor, Ont.-Detroit border has opened an office for engineers and consultants in the business district of Fort Erie, Ont.

Ambassador Niagara Signature Bridge Group — a division of the Detroit-based Ambassador Bridge Authority — will set up on Jarvis Street in the Bridgeburg area near the Peace Bridge, reports Niagara This Week.

The office will house about half a dozen consultants from N.Y.-based American Consulting Engineers to do field work and analysis on the possibility of another bridge for commercial trucks two miles away from the Peace Bridge.

Last August the group filed a formal application with the U.S. State Department, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, and the Ontario Ministry of Environment for a privately-owned and operated, dual-arched concrete span at the corridor near the International Rail Bridge. The bridge would likely link Buffalo’s Black Rock to the Bridgeburg section of Fort Erie.

Under the proposal, the new bridge will handle mainly commercial trucks, leaving auto traffic to the existing, publicly-managed Peace Bridge, which currently handles about 4,000 trucks a day.

The group will begin working on the bridge plans despite the Canadian government’s claim that a law on the books since 1923 thwarts any plans of a private-owned secondary international border crossing within 10 km of the Peace Bridge.

The ANSBG, however, disagrees that a prohibition of a new bridge/plaza complex in the region still exists.

At one time, the Peace Bridge Authority also looked into the possibility of an alternate bridge down river. However, after completing a feasibility study, officials dropped the idea.

— with files from Niagara This Week