WINDSOR, Ont. — Windsor City council will decide next month whether it will keep world-renowned traffic and transportation expert Sam Schwartz on the payroll.

Schwartz — a.k.a. Gridlock Sam — has had the ear of council since he was hired last year to come up with a solution to the city’s border traffic woes. In January of 2005 Schwartz earned the unanimous support of city politicians when he unveiled his plan for a new border crossing and truck bypass route that would take commercial traffic off the heavily congested Huron Church Rd.

According to the Windsor Star, many councilors are keen on retaining Schwartz and lawyer David Estrin to continue lobbying for the bypass route.

In November, the binational Detroit River International Crossing (DRIC) essentially gave the green light for a new bridge across the Detroit River in southwest Windsor, but also failed to support part Schwartz’s plan for a feeder route from the 401 to Talbot Rd, up to Ojibway Parkway.

Schwartz’s blueprint proposes commercial vehicles be separated from residential property and traffic by utilizing “context sensitive design.” Trucks would continue along a depressed [and tunneled in parts] four-lane highway that would split the existing north and southbound traffic in sections leading up to the new bridge.

On the final Ojibway stretch, Schwartz proposes a new Customs processing centre and a Brighton Beach traffic queue control centre, which would use state-of-the art Intelligent Transportation Systems [ITS] technology to meter traffic flow to the bridge.

Schwartz – who has been profiled by Today’s Trucking — earned his moniker when he coined the term “gridlock” as a New York Traffic Dept. engineer during that city’s massive transit strike in the 1970s.

— with files from the Windsor Star