WASHINGTON — Efforts to improve the flow of traffic at the Blue Water Bridge between Sarnia, Ont., and Port Huron are being hampered by red tape in the U.S. and "ill-considered" budget cuts, says the VP of the bridge’s Canadian operations.

In a presentation this week before the House Committee on Homeland Security and Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security, Stan Korosec of the Blue Water Bridge Canada said the number of primary inspection lanes at the U.S. plaza are "woefully insufficient."

The second busiest border crossing between Canada and the U.S., the 13 inspection lanes are not enough, Korosec said.

According to the Sarnia Observer, Korosec said that the "delays have serious, adverse economic consequences of local, regional, national and international concern."

While the BWBC completed the first phase of its $110-million Canadian Plaza Improvement Plan and improvements on Hwy. 402 leading to the border are ongoing, work on the Port Huron side hasn’t kept up, the committee was told.

Korosec testified that plans to upgrade the U.S. customs plaza are bogged down in bureaucratic red tape.

A lower-cost alternative has been proposed, but that plan fails to add enough capacity to eliminate delays, Korosec told the Observer.