A new international agency will oversee the planned new Detroit-Windsor border crossing.
Canadian Transport Minister Lisa Raitt and Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder announced yesterday that a new entity, the Canada-Michigan International Authority, is being formed and will manage land acquisition, customs facilities and toll facilities on both ends of the crossing. The International Authority also will be responsible for monitoring compliance of the Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority (WDBA) with the Crossing Agreement signed by Canada and Michigan.
The Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority, created in 2012, will oversee construction, operation and maintenance of the proposed six-lane bridge, scheduled to open in 2020, between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario.
At the same press conference, Raitt promised that the dispute over paying for the U.S. Customs plaza on the Detroit end of the new bridge will be resolved.
“Our government won’t let financing disagreements get in the way of construction timelines,” she said. “We are going to be building a bridge, and we are going to stick to our timelines. . . . It’s time to get the work done, and financing arrangements in our point of view will not hold up our construction timelines.”
The project is known as the Detroit River International Crossing (DRIC) in Canada and the New International Trade Crossing (NITC) in Michigan. The project consists of four major infrastructure components: the bridge, the Canadian port of entry, the U.S. port of entry and an interchange connection to I-75 in Michigan.
