Gov. Rick Snyder, Canada plan to build 2nd bridge draws praise, fire

[Dave]

Looks like this bridge that has been talked about for the last few years is going to happen finally. Myself, I think its a good idea as no tax payer money will be used.. basically Michigan will contribute next to nothing to the project as far as money. With the number of jobs that will be created both during the construction phase and then to work on the US side of the bridge in the processing area, its a win win all the way around.

At this point, the sooner the start and finish it, the sooner those damn commercials from the owner of the Ambassador Bridge will go away. Those commercials wouldn't be so bad if they were completely truthful. The current one running is like the others and doesn't exactly tell much of the truth. The sooner those commercials go away, the happier I'll be.

LANSING -- A deal to build a controversial public bridge over the Detroit River will be unveiled Friday by Gov. Rick Snyder, Canadian and U.S. officials.

No official announcement has been made, but a person familiar with plans for the project said Tuesday that the long-expected agreement -- which Snyder decided to pursue without support from the Legislature -- will be announced at news conferences in Detroit and Windsor.

The governor and Canadian officials are expected to say that an international authority will oversee construction of the bridge -- which would be located about 2 miles downriver from the Ambassador Bridge. The new span would be financed and built by a contractor selected by competitive bidding. Bridge tolls would pay construction costs.

• Full coverage: News, analysis, opinion in bridge debate

Snyder's resolve to proceed with the New International Trade Crossing using his executive authority drew praise from bridge supporters and condemnation from its major opponent.

"It would be huge for the governor and Canada to move forward on this," said Tom Shields, the Lansing spokesman for a coalition of business and other interests backing the public crossing. "It's what we've worked for more than two years on, and the need is as great, if not greater, than two years ago."

Mickey Blashfield, head of government relations for the company that owns the Ambassador Bridge and strongly opposes the public span, said Snyder's apparent plan "lacks any accountability to the people's representatives" and "lacks any authority from a vote of the people and from the taxpayers who are ultimately going to pay."

The Ambassador Bridge owners are circulating petitions to try to put the issue before Michigan voters in November.

Snyder has pledged the bridge will be built without money from Michigan taxpayers.

The bridge itself is expected to cost about $1 billion and be privately financed by the contractor who builds it. Customs plazas and connecting roadways on both sides of the bridge are expected to cost more than $2 billion.

The U.S. government is expected to contribute about $264 million to the new Customs plaza in Detroit.

Canada has offered to front Michigan its $550-million share of the project costs and recover that amount from Michigan's share of bridge tolls.

Snyder says a public span from Detroit to Windsor is needed to provide a freeway-to-freeway international connection, clear a border bottleneck and assure Michigan exporters have access to their largest market. The project would create thousands of construction jobs.

Ambassador Bridge owner Manuel (Matty) Moroun opposes the project as unfair government encroachment on his privately owned bridge monopoly. Moroun has spent millions on TV ads, lobbying and campaign donations to attack the project. He says tolls won't cover the construction cost and Michigan taxpayers will be stuck with a tab.

Snyder's predecessor, Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm, first pushed for the public span but couldn't get the Michigan Senate to vote on the project, despite support from Michigan's automakers, most of the rest of the business community, and the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce. In 2011, the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, which had been neutral, threw its support behind the project.

Snyder surprised many in his Republican Party by advocating for the new bridge in his first State of the State address early in 2011. But after months of hearings, a Senate committee last fall voted down legislation to facilitate construction.

The Republican-controlled Legislature went a step farther to show its lack of support for the project: The 2013 budget -- like the current budget -- includes language that prohibits the Michigan Department of Transportation from spending money on the bridge project.

Canada, which is heavily dependent on its trade with Michigan and the U.S. and has had a rocky relationship with Moroun, is strongly supportive of the project. Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper may attend Friday's announcement.

The Globe and Mail, a leading Canadian newspaper in Toronto, reported Tuesday that a deal had been reached between Canada and Michigan and that Harper's cabinet was expected to approve the deal today.

Without the Legislature's support, options using Snyder's executive authority have been explored. An agreement to create an international bridge authority under Michigan's Urban Cooperation Act of 1967 is seen as the most likely.

The Ambassador Bridge is 83 years old. Moroun has said he wants to use private funds to build a new bridge beside his existing one.

But Windsor Mayor Eddie Francis and other Canadian leaders oppose Moroun's second span. They say the Ambassador Bridge already dumps too much truck traffic onto Windsor's city streets, creating noise, vibration and pollution.

On the Detroit side, the new bridge route cuts across a strip of land just south of Historic Ft. Wayne and just north of the blast furnaces of Great Lakes Steel on Zug Island.

The approach to the bridge would go through a once-thriving working-class neighborhood that now is acres of mostly weeds with the occasional house.

Barbara Rivers, 65, is a retired schoolteacher and landlord of an apartment building near the new bridge route.

"These houses were all bought out and taken down with hopes of this coming through here years ago," she said, surveying the weed-covered lots. "Now, because of the remote atmosphere here, people are reluctant to rent."

If the bridge comes through, it would mean her building would be bought and leveled, and her tenants moved.

One of them -- 71-year-old John Ware -- said: "Sure. I don't mind moving."

Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or [e-mail]

http://www.freep.com/article/20120613/NEWS06/206130436/Gov-Rick-Sny...

[In Dulci Jubilo]

As a life-long Detroit area resident before moving to Ludington almost seven years ago, but a non-fan of Snyder, I do agree that a second span is definitely needed.   I stopped going to my beloved Windsor for shopping and dim sum after 9/11 because it took hours to get there, when it should have only taken 20 minutes.    The truck traffic passing through there is outrageous.   Matty Moroun, the owner of the Ambassador is a money-grubbing slob, with very few supporters,  who doesn't care who he stomps on to get what he wants.   He is not well-loved by downriver Detroiters at ALL.   Several years ago, the City of Riverview, in an attempt to to beautify the waterfront, which in many parts of downriver, has an appalling bleak, industrial look to the waterfront, with many abandoned plants and factories, offered to purchased an unused, vacant parcel of land from Maroun in order to build a waterfront park.  It would have been a great addition to the area.  Maroun refused, even though the site was unused.   ONE WEEK after declining the offer, he dumped thousands and thousands of empty shipping bins on the lot and they're there to this day, rusted and unsightly, a visual reminder of what could have been.    It almost seemed as if he did it just to prove a point.   

[XLFD]

I want to see the total plan before I advocate for or against it, but let's remember what sunk the first attempt, and that the Detroit Free Press is unabashedly for this project, and has spun some whoppers itself in its attempt to get the bridge.  Matty's political contributions may have helped his causes, but the real payoff for the project was to come from the taxpayers of the state.  Just hours before this was to be voted on by the MI Senate Economic Development Committee Detroit democratic members snuck some language into the bill promising "community benefits".

This was nothing more than the promise of political loot to buy off Detroit legislators.  This is likely why our representative Geoff Hansen voted against it, and other outstate legislators that may have voted for it prior.  Much of the community benefits that downtown Detroit would have received would come from non-Detroiters.  Detroit rep. Harvey Santana said "If (Snyder) thinks we're blindly going to give him support without some community benefits involved, he's got another thing coming."  I call that graft, maybe extortion, but Santana calls it politics.

So always be skeptical when anyone who is a public servant tells you that a project like this is free to the taxpayers.  I'm with Matty on this one, put it in front of the taxpayers and have them vote on it; if it has a burden to the taxpayers now or later, that will come out in the campaigns for and against it-- and it will hold them to that if it does pass (crosses fingers).  And I say that even though I know the commercials will be as annoying as they were before.