LANSING – The numbers of officials and businesses lining up in support of a new Detroit River International Crossing, and by extension against a second span at the Ambassador Bridge, may stand against them, but the facts do not support creation of a new bridge, Nora Moroun, wife of the bridge company’s owner, and Dan Stamper, president of the bridge company, said Tuesday.
The two, in an interview with Gongwer News Service, were also sharply critical of Canada, saying the Canadian government was the driving force behind the new bridge proposal that could slash the business now on the Ambassador Bridge, the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel and even the Blue Water Bridge in Port Huron.
But Stamper also acknowledged Canadian officials have talked with the company about buying the Ambassador Bridge. There are no discussions about that now, he said, and the company is “not interested in selling the bridge. We are interested in continuing to run the best border crossing.”
But if Canada were to buy the bridge, “the DRIC issue would go away,” he said.
And while they would not say that officials, including Governor Jennifer Granholm, Detroit Mayor Dave Bing and Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson had the wool pulled over their eyes in terms of supporting the DRIC project, they also argued what is leading the drive for the DRIC is the promise of jobs, mainly construction jobs, that they said studies show would not appear for as much as a decade.
The counteroffensive mounted by Ambassador officials comes as Granholm and these officials lead a push to convince the Legislature to pass HB 4961 before June 1. The bill would allow the creation of a public-private partnership to enable the financing of the DRIC.
While the number of DRIC supporters continues to grow, Stamper said, the facts and the question of whether the bridge would be the right thing to build counter that sentiment. “I think people may be starting to figure out we may be sitting on the right side of the issue,” he said.
He acknowledged, however, that Ambassador Bridge officials may not have made the best case, nor the best of friends with either the community surrounding the bridge, nor with state politicians. The bridge company has put its focus on dealing with customers, he said, and maybe now it has to put more effort to communicating its message to others.
Moroun being part of the interview is certainly part of that effort. She surprised officials more than a week ago when she appeared at a press conference attended by Granholm and other top officials announcing support for the DRIC and calling on the Legislature to authorize that new bridge.
Her husband, Manuel “Matty” Moroun, owner of the bridge company, has been more quiet and less willing to appear publicly during the argument which has now gone one for several years. But he and Ms. Moroun were present in Lansing a week ago at a reception to meet with lawmakers and discuss the project. And Stamper said Moroun, a very private individual, may begin to be more public in his role. In the last two years, he has granted some media interviews.
The argument over whether to build the DRIC or to move ahead with a second span of the Ambassador Bridge has dragged on for several years. The Ambassador Bridge intends to build the second span with its own money, while the DRIC would funded through financing and then repaid with user tolls.
While most business and public officials back the DRIC, the Ambassador second span has been supported by Senate Republicans.
Both Moroun and Stamper said at a time when the state is struggling, it makes no sense to back the DRIC that could cost as much as $5 billion compared to the second span, which could cost $400 million.
“There’s no money and there’s no need” for the DRIC, Moroun said, especially at a time when cross-border traffic is now about 50 percent of its level in 1999. Building a new bridge several miles south of the Ambassador Bridge would take as much as 75 percent of the Ambassador’s traffic, she said.
Instead, just as officials shelved the initial plans to build a second span of the Blue Water Bridge until traffic projections justified it, they should shelve the studies on the DRIC until another time, she said.
There are 243 other needed road and bridge projects that have been delayed as the state continues to conduct studies on the DRIC, Stamper said.
The two also disputed many of the criticisms leveled against the Ambassador span. They said the state has already included the second span in its Gateway project. Despite Canada’s opposition to the second span, they said the bridge company has land ready for the second span once it is built.
They expected a Canadian environmental impact statement done on the second span in perhaps a month (and Moroun said the DRIC project will likely face challenges on its environmental impact statement).
And despite charges that backups on the bridge cause major backups throughout Windsor, including downtown which is more than a mile from the bridge, Stamper said 95 percent of the time it takes traffic no more than five minutes to get across the bridge. The last major slowdowns on the bridge occurred following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and with the cutbacks in traffic there have been few major jams since, he said.
“Some of what has been said is inaccurate, knowingly inaccurate,” Stamper said.
The worry that if the DRIC is not built the Detroit area will lose out to a new bridge in Buffalo, New York, is baseless, they said.
The Buffalo area is not an area geared toward transportation manufacturing, Moroun said, so the Detroit area will always be the area where that traffic is heading.
But the biggest argument against moving for a DRIC now, they said, is the reduced traffic flows. The Ambassador now has traffic volume running at roughly the same rate as it was 1987, they said.
Why then build a second span, they were asked, and they said the second span would allow the company to rebuild the main bridge, which is now 80 years old.
And traffic growth, they said, will be very slow and moderate. While a DRIC study projected traffic to climb to more than 90,000 vehicles on the Ambassador Bridge by 2020, while they project traffic to be approximately 35,000 vehicles in the same year.
Moroun said there is effectively no business model at this time that supports the DRIC.
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