US-Canada toll traffic hit by auto & economy woes - November 15% lower

November traffic at the US-Canadian border around the Great Lakes and St Lawrence is down strongly according to data on eleven major crossings collected by the Public Border Operators Association (PBOA) - from 3.28m 2007-11 to 2.77m 2008-11, a decline of 15.4%. The decline has been gaining in recent months. The month-on-same-month-last year (MOSMLY) declines have been Aug 4.0%, Sept 8.7%, Oct 11.3%, Nov 15.4%.

Truck traffic is down the most, Nov trucks being down 21.5%, cars 13.9%.

In absolute terms 2008-11 was 534k trucks vs 680k 2007-11, cars 2.27m 2008-11 vs 2.59m 200711. (see more detail in tables nearby)

Some of the decline is no doubt due to the special troubles of the Once-Big Three Detroit car companies which have heavily integrated operations on either side of the international border especially in the Toronto- Detroit corridor, Ontario-Michigan.

About half the total traffic and close to two-thirds of the truck traffic at the eleven border crossings is accounted for at the three in the Detroit area called MI-ON in the table nearby, so it looms large in the total. Those are Ambassador Bridge, Detroit-Windsor Tunnel and Blue Water Bridge.

Not just the Toronto-Detroit corridor

But the crossings outside the Detroit area are down significantly also. The four Niagara crossings NY-ON are down almost 16% and trucks down nearly 18%. Those are crossings that cater to a wide mix of trade, tourism and commuting.

So too do what we've called the St Lawrence River crossings between northern NY and western Ontario/Quebec.

These are down 10% overall, and 24% for truck traffic.

We're at a loss to explain the magnitude of these drops in traffic. They are larger than we've seen reported anywhere else. The Canadian economy has held up rather than better than the US economy with less financial stress.

Maybe it's something to do with the Canadian dollars declining suddenly relative to the US dollar. From being close to par then in the low 90s it has dropped to 82c in the past several weeks. However in the past such fluctuations have not affected traffic noticeably..

The border crossings covered by PBOA data include:

- Ambassador Bridge Detroit MI-Windsor ON

- Blue Water Bridge I-69 Pt Huron Michigan - Sarnia ON H402

- Detroit-Windsor Tunnel MI-ON

- Lewiston-Queenston Bridge Niagara River

- Ogdensburg Bridge NY - H401/H416 Ottawa

- Peace Bridge Buffalo NY I-190 - QEW  ON

- Rainbow Bridge NIagara NY - ON

- Sault St Marie Int Bridge MI I-75 -ON 

- Seaway Int Bridge Massena NY - Cornwall ON H401

- Thousand Island Bridge I-81 NY - H401 ON

- Whirlpool Rapids Bridge Niagara NY-ON

Future

With Chrysler having announced a complete shut down of manufacturing for a month and GM shuttering plants too over the holiday period, some for good, the immediate future  for tollers looks like more of the same gloom.

PBOA

PBOA is an extraordinary outfit in this day and age. They manage to exist without a website, so don't make our mistake of searching for one. Secretariat work is moved year by year between the eleven member tollers, and is presently the responsibility of Blue Water Bridge staff, notably Stan Korosec VP Operations: skorosec@bwbc.gc.ca

NOTE ON TABLES: Thank some wonk at Microsoft for the little green triangles littered through our Excel-made spreadsheets. Type "Remove green triangle" in the MS Excel HELP box and you most unhelpfully get "No results found."

That's Microsoft's idea of HELP: drop unwanted litter in the spreadsheet, and keep clean-up a mystery.

TOLLROADSnews 2008-12-21