WINDSOR, Ont. — The Windsor-Detroit Gateway needs a new bridge, insists the president and CEO of Chrysler Canada.

According to a Toronto Star report, Reid Bigland joins a chorus of business leaders who are imploring governments on both sides of the border to expedite plans to build a new international bridge crossing in the region.

The rapidly rising loonie has heightening the urgency for a new border crossing in Windsor, Bigland told a gathering sponsored by the Canadian American Business Council. “We need an additional border crossing,” he said, adding that every day, 3,000 trucks hauling for the Big Three automakers alone cross the bridge. “We’re burning at an hourly rate to transport our goods at about $116 an hour.”

Echoing a recent report published by the Conference Board of Canada, Bigland said that Chrysler has been forced to set up satellite warehousing to mitigate the impact of border delays. The result is a major loss of just-in-time (JIT) efficiency and avoidance of favored modern shipping practices for a ‘just-in-case’ inventory system.

More and more often, the Big Three are also stockpiling loaded trailers on both sides of the border to hedge against the possibility that goods make not make it across on time.

Earlier this year, in what might have been their first clear statement on the matter, representatives of the Big Three automakers authored a letter indicating their full support for a new, separate bridge crossing southwest of the Ambassador Bridge — a plan that for years has been advanced by the Detroit River International Crossing (DRIC) partnership.

In a letter addressed to Michigan Senator Alan Cropsey, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers and Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association — which include GM, Ford, and Chrysler as members — both stressed the importance of the binational DRIC’s decision to build a new bridge in order to maintain just-in-time deliveries in the auto sector.

The privately owned Ambassador Bridge has been actively lobbying against the plan. It’s forging ahead with its own project to twin the current crossing with a new six-lane span, which the company says will have more than enough capacity to handle the expected traffic volumes for the region in the next 20 years.

Senator Cropsey himself is leaning towards the Ambassador’s argument. He’s been trying to cut state funding for DRIC, insisting that twinning the Ambassador is the most viable option and Michigan taxpayers cannot afford a new, separate bridge.

— with files from the Toronto Star