“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

— Alan Kay, a Silicon Valley millionaire, who designed the technical blueprint for MacIntosh computers and all subsequent Windowing-based systems.

Windsor, Ontario — home to the busiest commercial border crossing in the world — has had its future predicted. And if something doesn’t change, the forecast isn’t good.

The Ambassador Bridge linking Windsor to Detroit is creeping toward capacity. While most days the span is still operating at about 70 percent, a single lane delay can cause the entire queue to gel up.

Compounding matters is a road system that’s as outdated as the rotary phone. International commercial traffic quits the 401 Highway 11 km before the border and then bottlenecks onto Huron Church Rd, which is lined with businesses, split by dozens of traffic intersections, and dotted with passenger cars and pedestrians. Currently, an average of 6,000 U.S.-bound trucks cross the bridge into Detroit each day. On busy days, the idling trucks can be backed up for six km.

By 2017 the Ambassador will enter “an unstable zone” and by 2023, it will far exceed capacity. If the slowdowns continue, they’ll end up costing the communities on both sides of the border an estimated $18 billion a year come 2030.

Enter Sam Schwartz; a.k.a., Gridlock Sam. The City of Windsor hired the former NYC cabbie-turned-world-renowned engineer to come up with a solution to the international nightmare — and that’s exactly what he did. Schwartz unveiled his proposal to a jam-packed Chrysler Theatre in Windsor earlier this year. And he summed up the core of his widely supported plan succinctly:

“Folks,” Schwartz said in his thick Manhattan accent to several rounds of applause, “you need a new bridge.”

“Fifty years ago they made a mistake when they ended [Hwy. 401] 11km from the river,” he said. “Now it’s time to act.”

Schwartz — who’s been credited for inventing the term “gridlock” –has spent more than a year evaluating alternative crossing proposals and ways to relieve Huron Church Rd. and surrounding streets of truck traffic.

“A lot of elements we have here are not new,” he told Today’s Trucking in an interview. “We really listened to a lot of people, and synthesized some of [their] ideas, filtered out the problems associated with them, and came up with some solutions.”

He’s not the first to address the situation. Indeed Schwartz did take a careful look at the plans that came before. While he cherry-picked some of the details from each proposal, he largely dismissed them as complete alternatives. The three that were vying for consideration included:

Twinning of the Ambassador Bridge where a second, four-lane, span would be built adjacent to the existing bridge; The Detroit River Tunnel Partnership (DRTP) plan, which proposes to convert the underwater rail corridor into a dedicated two-way truck tunnel from Hwy. 401 to the I-75 in Detroit; and the Mich-Can or “central bridge” proposal, which would see a brand new crossing 3 km southwest of the Ambassador Bridge via Lauzon Parkway and E.C. Row Expressway.

Schwartz, however, to some degree backed the Mich-Can option — a new central bridge on the industrial west end of Riverside Drive. However, he would scrap that proposal’s traffic blueprint and instead of routing traffic on E.C. Row, Schwartz suggested an entirely new design that straddles the border between Windsor and the suburb of Lasalle.

His plan would lead trucks off the 401 to Talbot Rd., where commercial vehicles would 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 Talbot Rd. traffic. All international commercial traffic and voluntary local traffic would bypass Huron Church via a “horseshoe” route to the west through mostly vacant woodland.

From there, Ojibway Parkway would carry the traffic north through a city-owned industrial area to the new central crossing. FAST trucks would have their own dedicated lane all the way to the bridge.

Schwartz insists context-sensitive design is a tried-and-tested approach that’s being implemented all over North America, even in upper-scale N.Y. neighbourhoods.

“People imagine a highway as a huge obstruction — just a wall of traffic,” he says. “That’s been true of the highways built up until now. But now engineers no longer have the luxury of building highways in virgin [areas]. Most new construction is in built-up, populated areas.

“This design is a different way of thinking about the highway. You mask it with a host of designs and parks that would allow for the highway to all but disappear so you can effectively snake it through communities.”

On the final Ojibway Parkway 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. He also suggested a new ferry terminal that could take excess trucks across the river before they reach the bridge.

This new route, Schwartz insisted, should not be contingent on a bilateral bridge agreement. In the meantime, his plan calls for immediate construction of a fast-track option for the Talbot-Ojibway bypass as part of the $300-million Windsor/Essex Moving Strategy announced last year by the provincial and federal governments. He also said the project should include a massive shipping overhaul for the entire city — including improved rail infrastructure, high-clearance double-stacked container capacity for the tunnel, and a new intermodal staging hub at the Windsor Airport.

While many alternative crossing proposals have been tied up in bureaucratic gridlock, none to date has received as much media and public attention, not to mention overwhelming support from city and business interests such as the Ontario Trucking Association and DaimlerChrysler.

“The number-one positive is that the proposal called attention to the issues of Windsor on a [national] scale,” says Ann Arquette, president of Border Gateways, an ITS service provider in Windsor (see sidebar). “It certainly rattled the sabres of the City of Windsor to say ‘look, this is important. Quit ignoring us.'”

Windsor Mayor Eddie Francis and the entire city council unanimously approved the proposal. “This is the first time there’s been this level of technical review, this much comprehensive transportation planning, and this amount of support, both by Windsor city council as well as third party industry support,” he told Today’s Trucking.

The next step, he said, is to finish up an environmental impact assessment, which has already been given a preliminary thumbs-up by city environmental lawyers. Finally, and here comes the hard part, Francis has to get the funding approved by the upper levels of government. “We’ve done what we were asked to do, which was come up with a plan,” he says. “Our plan is real and more detailed than anything else we’ve ever seen, and is very doable.”

The overall pricetag could be in the $1-billion range. That would mean about $300 million for the routing and logistics planning and between $500 and $700 million for the new bridge. “If Ontario and Canada are to work, then Windsor needs to work,” the mayor continued. “It’s critical. I don’t see why we couldn’t move quickly on [the fast-track routing plan].”

Recently, bridge talk picked up steam. Before leaving his post, former U.S. Ambassador Paul Cellucci said that Washington wants quick approval of a new border crossing between Windsor and Detroit and suggested the U.S. is prepared to split the cost. He noted Canada and the U.S. have worked out a 50/50 cost-sharing formula to pay for a new bridge between New Brunswick and Maine and said such a model could be applied for a new Windsor-Detroit crossing.

Cellucci also suggested another option might be for a private consortium to take charge of building the estimated $500 million bridge. The Ambassador Bridge is privately owned and operated by Grosse Pointe, Mich., industrialist billionaire Manuel Moroun.

For what it’s worth, Schwartz supports public control of any new bridge, at least in the form of a regulatory body or port authority. But such details are out of his hands now. Asked what future role he’d play in Windsor, Schwartz said, “that’s up to the mayor.” But he did say he plans to keep his eye on developments through a new Windsor office.

“I’ll tell you, the truck drivers that [travel through Windsor] have the patience of saints,” he says. “Sitting in those queues would drive me crazy. I commend them for their patience, and hope we can reach the day where they don’t have to sit like that any longer.”

Truckers hope so too. In the meantime, perhaps idled truckers can use the time to think about inventing the next Windows operating system.