Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA) has applauded the Canada-Michigan agreement that was announced recently to construct a new bridge connecting Windsor, Ontario and Detroit, Michigan.
The agreement was signed by Rick Snyder, Michigan Governor, and Stephen Harper, Canadian Prime Minister. Canada will disburse $550-million share of the crossing as an advance to Michigan, which will be repaid later from toll revenue.
David Bradley, President of CTA, stated that once the construction is completed, the bridge will increase the commercial trade flows across the single busiest entry for trade in North America. It will offer a freeway entry to the border, deliver redundancy during an emergency shutdown of any one of Windsor-Detroit crossings, and minimize the environmental impacts of extended queues at the border. In addition, the bridge will improve the efficiency and certainty of the North American supply chain, which will subsequently attract future direct investment and promote economic growth in the province.
Bradley added that this project is important to the growth of Canada and Ontario, mainly now when the general economy and the manufacturing sector are still showing slow recovery from the recent economic downturn. Additionally, the Windsor-Detroit crossing will boost the $164-billion in trade and stimulate economic activity amongst all provinces in Canada. Most importantly, the bridge will help overcome the number of problems that truck drivers have been through in recent years with additional costs, delays and congestion because of the single infrastructure at the busiest trade gateway.
Source: http://www.ontruck.org/