When protesters blockaded the Ambassador Bridge that links Windsor and Detroit in February, 2022, Jonathon Azzopardi watched anxiously as work at his Laval Tool & Mould Ltd. company on the edge of Windsor nearly ground to a halt. “Almost 100 per cent of what we do crosses the border,” he said.
Meanwhile, across the city in Windsor’s historic Sandwich Town neighbourhood, just a short walk from where the anti-COVID-19 mandate demonstrators had dug in, Nicole Sekela fretted as the protest choked off access to her popular Rock Bottom Bar & Grill. “Police were telling everyone to avoid the area at all costs so there was no way to get here,” she said.
For the factory owner and the restaurateur – along with so many other business leaders, policy makers and residents on both sides of the border – the six-day crisis was a punishing reminder of the economic risks that come with the region’s heavy reliance on the Ambassador Bridge crossing, Canada’s single most important economic artery, which carries roughly one-quarter of the goods traded between Canada and the United States.
And it’s why both are counting down the days to when the Gordie Howe International Bridge, with its two gleaming white towers looming 220 metres over the skyline, will finally be finished.
Construction on towers of the Gordie Howe International Bridge continues in July.
Slated to open to traffic in September, 2025, the new bridge is emblematic of a wider rebirth of the Windsor economy in recent years, one driven by an infusion of investment into the manufacturing sector on both sides of the border as well as supercharged population growth and an influx of government spending on infrastructure – including the new bridge’s own $6.4-billion price tag, which is being picked up by Canadian taxpayers.
When it opens, the Gordie, as it’s come to be known locally, is expected to provide an adrenalin shot to the regional economy, while also reshaping the very face of the two cities it touches.
“For Windsor and Detroit, the bridge is going to be a signature piece of the skyline that allows people to tell a story of rebirth and investment that will rebrand the area,” said Flavio Volpe, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association (APMA).
Yet the bridge’s construction also comes at a time when the free flow of goods and people between Canada and the U.S. is coming under intense pressure from protectionist forces.
Since the Gordie Howe bridge was first envisioned in the early 2000s, the number of trucks crossing annually has declined by around 26 per cent as of 2023, a year that saw truck traffic return to its prepandemic level, according to the Bridge and Tunnel Operators Association, which represents organizations that oversee most border crossings between Ontario, Michigan and New York. (Passenger vehicle traffic in 2023 was still down roughly 19 per cent from 2019.)
Which means a lot more than just big rigs hauling gearboxes, vegetables, furnishings and electronics will be riding on the Gordie Howe bridge and its success.
Near the end of July, close to 900 days after the blockade shut down the Ambassador Bridge, officials gathered midway across its new rival to mark the completion of the span.
“The impact is going to be extraordinary, so much bigger than Windsor and Detroit,” said federal Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Minister Sean Fraser at the event, which was attended by family of the late NHL legend Gordie Howe. “You’re going to see the trade increase and the transportation efficiency grow significantly.”
Those are certainly the words one would expect from a federal politician justifying a project whose cost has more than tripled since 2015. The Canadian government is picking up the full tab not only for the bridge itself, which sits five kilometres downstream from the Ambassador, but also the interchanges and inspection plazas connected to the bridge in both countries. Tolls for traffic in both directions will be collected on the Canadian side and the funds will go to reimburse the federal government for the bridge costs. However, toll amounts have not yet been made public.
But the sentiment about the bridge’s economic impact is widely shared across Ontario’s automotive sector, which relies heavily on the smooth operation of the border crossing for the sector’s just-in-time manufacturing practices. Assembly plants have become highly choreographed operations, and in a single day hundreds of trucks can be scheduled to arrive at plants carrying components that may ultimately travel seven times across borders before making their way to consumers in finished vehicles. No North American border crossing sees more such activity than Detroit-Windsor, where roughly $100-million worth of auto parts travel on the Ambassador Bridge each day.
It’s why Canada’s APMA led the legal battle to end the 2022 blockade, which had forced companies to go to extreme lengths to keep their operations moving. It wasn’t just that manufacturers had to reroute shipments to Sarnia’s Blue Water Bridge crossing, a four-hour detour. Ford Motor Co. took to airlifting engines from one side of the bridge to the other.
“Those production days we lost are gone forever because we got to the point we couldn’t reschedule them,” Mr. Volpe said. “That’s the nature of the business – just-in-time, large volume, low margin. You can’t build a car on Microsoft Teams; you can’t Zoom an engine.”
Dozens of transport trucks wait in line on the Ambassador Bridge to cross into Windsor from the Detroit side, on July 24. A 2021 report estimated the new bridge will save trucks 850,000 hours per year in transportation time.
Which is why the most direct dividend the Gordie Howe bridge will pay when it opens is time. As it stands, a truck making its way to the U.S. from Ontario’s Highway 401 across the Ambassador Bridge must first navigate through downtown Windsor along Huron Church Road. The journey takes trucks through 14 intersections with traffic lights, often leading to backups that stretch for kilometres.
The Gordie Howe bridge, on the other hand, directly links the 401 to U.S. Interstate 75. It boasts six lanes across the bridge – expandable to eight over time – versus the Ambassador’s four, and the inspection plazas will include 36 primary lanes in the U.S. and 24 in Canada, more than doubling vehicle capacity at the Windsor-Detroit border.
As a result, the new bridge is expected to cut between 11 and 18 minutes from the average border crossing. That may not sound like much on its own, until multiplied by the sheer number of vehicles going back and forth – more than six million cars and trucks last year. A 2021 report by the Cross-Border Initiative at the University of Windsor estimated the new bridge will save 850,000 hours a year in time for trucks, translating into billions of dollars over the 125-year life of the bridge.
“For years we have experienced the frustration of navigating a long line of trucks backed up across the bridge without any real predictability,” said Diane Reko, chief executive officer of Reko International Group Inc., a Windsor automation and machining company with 200 employees. “The new crossing should allow us to not have to build in lots of extra waiting time, just in case, to ensure our deliveries are on time.”
And the new opening will have a ripple effect across the wider region, said Mr. Volpe, since automotive supply chains are built within concentric circles around auto plants. “Anyone within two to four hours of that border will be able to knock down the risk of not being able to deliver just in time,” he said.
Jonathon Azzopardi, CEO of Laval Tool & Mould, on the shop floor in Tecumseh, Ont.
It’s not necessarily that the bridge will lead to an immediate surge in new business, said Mr. Azzopardi, at Laval Tool & Mould, but it removes a risk that has overshadowed the region for decades. In almost every discussion his company has with potential clients, the reliability of the Ambassador Bridge comes up. “We’ve done a fantastic job of making the border invisible to clients, with our own trucks and our own brokerage,” he said. “But we’ve always had to live with the concern that we’re making the border seem seamless, but there’s a chance it may not be.”
The new bridge also alleviates one of the greatest frustrations felt by those who rely on the Ambassador: its ownership structure. The Ambassador is the only privately-controlled international crossing in North America, and one of only a handful around the world.
The 95-year-old teal span is owned by the Detroit International Bridge Co. in the U.S. and the Canadian Transit Company in Canada, a pair of businesses controlled by Michigan billionaire Manuel “Matty” Moroun until his death in 2020, after which the companies passed to his family. Mr. Moroun fought for years to block construction of the Gordie Howe bridge, and to win approval to build a second privately-owned span next to the first. Both of those efforts failed.
“Who in their right mind would allow a private business to have such control over our country’s destiny,” Mr. Azzopardi said.
The Gordie Howe bridge is already reshaping parts of Windsor that have long lived under the shadow of the Ambassador crossing.
On a recent midweek afternoon, the main street through Sandwich Town, a waterfront community that is, in effect, sandwiched between the two bridges, had been ripped up, and a thick layer of dust clung to every surface, leaving Windsor’s oldest neighbourhood bereft of colour. The street reconstruction, which includes road and intersection improvements, cycling infrastructure and streetscaping with new sidewalks, planters and benches, is part of a $12-million facelift coming to the community, mostly financed by the Gordie Howe bridge’s community benefits plan.
The improvements come to a neighbourhood that has struggled to enjoy the benefits of the economic boom sweeping other parts of Windsor. For one thing, during the long, drawn-out process of getting the Gordie Howe bridge approved and built, locals complain the city held back on general maintenance since roads and sidewalks would eventually need to be torn up anyway. From Sandwich Street, a line of trucks can also be seen idling on the Ambassador Bridge, which effectively carves the community off from the rest of Windsor, and respiratory ailments among residents are common.
Meanwhile, the Ambassador Bridge company itself has left deep scars on the community. Over the years, it purchased more than 130 houses in the area as part of its plan to build a second span, and most of those homes were left abandoned and boarded up, blighting the neighbourhood and adding to a housing crisis.
Nicole Sekela, owner of Rock Bottom Bar & Grill, stands outside her bar on Sandwich Street, which is currently undergoing massive road repairs.
So the renovations under way in Sandwich are welcome and desperately needed, even if the temporary sidewalk and road closings have been a struggle for businesses such as Ms. Sekela’s Rock Bottom Bar & Grill and her Sandwich Brewing Co. next door.
“We survived COVID and then we survived the bridge blockade, which was even worse, so we know we’ve done it before and we can do it again,” she said.
She’s particularly excited at the prospect of increased traffic through the neighbourhood, particularly the two-wheeled variety. During the Gordie Howe design process local pressure, from long-time Windsor West NDP MP Brian Masse and others, prompted planners to add a pedestrian and bike path. The popularity of biking in Detroit has exploded as that city has undergone its own economic revival over the past decade, and cycling groups on both sides of the border are planning cross-border tours.
“It’s a long ride over the bridge, you’re going to be thirsty and hungry, and Sandwich is going to be the first stop for bicycle tourism,” Ms. Sekela said.
Transport trucks travel down Huron Church Line Road, currently the main artery for trucks crossing the Ambassador Bridge.
While the revival of Sandwich is under way, longer-term changes are anticipated along Huron Church Road, the congested six-lane conduit that currently carries traffic from the 401 to the Ambassador Bridge. Over the decades, its strip malls and fast-food restaurants have evolved to cater to bridge-bound traffic, but the Gordie Howe bridge will divert a good chunk of that. No one is entirely sure what effect that will have.
“It will be beneficial if trucks deviate to the new route and that alleviates congestion on Huron Line, but it could have a detrimental economic impact on the city from the individual traveller point of view,” said Kenneth Acton, a member of the Windsor Region Society of Architects and an outspoken advocate for improving the walkability of Windsor’s car-centric neighbourhoods.
As an example of what the future could hold for the strip, he points to the highways to boulevards movement under way in several U.S. cities, where urban interstates are torn down and replaced with denser city streets, more housing, retail storefronts and green spaces.
Ken Acton, member of the Windsor Region Society of Architects, is an advocate for improving the walkability of Windsor’s car-centric neighbourhoods
“Windsor is truly at a watershed moment when we talk about transportation patterns and economic impacts,” he said. “But these are long-term projects, they aren’t things that occur overnight.”
Not all truck traffic will shift to the new bridge – the Moroun family, which still controls the Ambassador Bridge, also owns several large trucking companies that will likely continue to use that crossing, while the bridge company is also in talks with the City of Windsor to develop an expanded truck inspection plaza at the foot of the Ambassador.
Still, Mr. Masse, a long-time critic of the Ambassador Bridge and advocate of an alternative crossing since the early 2000s, said the new bridge will bring a “culture change” to the city. It will benefit the auto sector while also making downtown streets safer by reducing truck traffic – when Huron Church Road itself gets clogged, trucks often spill onto Wyandotte Street West, near the University of Windsor campus, for an alternate bridge entrance. Meanwhile, with so many residents in Windsor already working in Detroit, it will tighten links between the two cities.
In the health care sector alone, there are close to 3,500 doctors and nurses working in Michigan who live in Canada and cross the border every day, an analysis of the mailing addresses of medical licences by the think tank SecondStreet.org found last year.
“It’s going to allow people to stay here and get over to working in the U.S. more easily,” Mr. Masse said. “It will be a microboom.”
The view of West Windsor and downtown Detroit from the deck of the Gordie Howe International Bridge.
The world of trade has changed a lot since 2015, when the Gordie Howe bridge got its name but was still on the drawing boards. The election of Donald Trump as president the following year upended America’s long-standing pursuit of freer trade, and President Joe Biden has doubled down on tariffs and protectionism. That shift, combined with increased security measures, regulations and costs, have all added to a thickening of the Canada-U.S. border over time.
Those forces worry Sandy Baruah, CEO of the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce, which has lobbied for a decade on the U.S. side to get the Gordie Howe bridge approved.
“We’ve seen both the current administration and the past administration really take protectionist measures that are not helpful, but the particular concern to us is the lack of focus on the potential of the North American partnership,” he said. “We have common economic and geopolitical competitors. We are much stronger together than we are separately and that’s what this bridge represents.”
That sentiment is taking hold beyond Windsor and Detroit as the Gordie Howe bridge nears completion. In Toledo, Ohio, which sits an hour south of Detroit and has emerged as a logistics hub, developers are exploring deals in the area to capitalize on an expected increase in cross-border traffic, said Brian McMahon, president of Danberry National Ltd., a commercial real estate brokerage. “We are really the gateway for that bridge and are very well positioned to expand the commerce between the United States and Canada,” he said.
Unlike the Ambassador Bridge, the Gordie Howe bridge was designed and approved to handle hazardous materials, which had previously been transported by the Windsor-Detroit truck ferry.
What’s more, by design, the Gordie Howe bridge is meant to address some of the security concerns that have gummed up the flow of goods and people between Canada and the U.S., with technology and security features that make it one of the most advanced crossings in North America.
Against that background the past few years have brought a flurry of major investments to the Windsor area, including the $6-billion NextStar Energy battery plant and the $7-billion Volkswagen electric-vehicle battery manufacturing plant, among other smaller deals. And the new bridge was critical to landing all of them, said Joe Goncalves, interim CEO of Invest WindsorEssex, the region’s economic development agency.
The added capacity the Gordie Howe bridge provides is part of it. But the span was also designed and approved to handle hazardous materials, unlike the Ambassador Bridge, and many of the components that go into manufacturing batteries are classified as such.
A Windsor-Detroit truck ferry had previously carried hazmat cargo, but even before its closing last year there were reliability issues in winter, he said, sending trucks to Sarnia’s Blue Water Bridge. For its part, the Ambassador Bridge company is pushing to be allowed to carry hazardous materials, but the Michigan Department of Transportation, which has the final say, isn’t expected to reach a decision until May, 2025, just months before the Gordie Howe bridge begins operation.
A virtual twin of the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel is seen on display in the virtual reality cave at Invest WindsorEssex's Automobility and Innovation Centre in Windsor.
Joe Goncalves, the interim CEO of Invest WindsorEssex, explores a digital twin of the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel.
In the meantime, more deals are coming, said Mr. Goncalves, with talks under way to attract battery recycling companies. He rhymes off other sectors the new bridge should help, including logistics, warehousing, cold storage and even driverless vehicles.
Invest WindsorEssex has already launched a virtual reality cave that features an exact digital replica of the Windsor-Detroit tunnel, allowing researchers to test and train such vehicles with it, and the same is planned for the new bridge with an eye to the eventual arrival of self-driving trucks.
“We have close to $8-billion of foreign direct investment leads we’re working on,” he said, “And every single one of them has a product that they need to get to their customers as quickly and efficiently as possible.”