Ambassador Bridge may compromise on summary of "safety" report - interview with company official

The Ambassador Bridge company may support publication of a summary of their controversial 2007 inspection report, a bridge official told TOLLROADSnews today. They have been the subject of fierce criticism for court moves to keep the bridge report under wraps on the grounds that it covers up safety problems. The official told us there was no reason to keep the broad conclusions of the report secret.

But, he said, publication of the entire report in all its detail would be a breach of faith since the report was provided to Michigan DOT, and by them to the Feds, on condition of confidentiality. Its release in full, he claimed, would damage the bridge company commercially, and put it at increased risk of being chosen as a terrorist target.

The report is 2,000 pages long, the official said, and it is titled "Annual Inspection Summary Report."

Produced by Modjeski & Masters, a long established bridge engineering firm based in Mechanicsburg PA, the report contains many hundreds of detailed photographs, charts and diagrams.

"It is hyper-detailed" the official told us.

"It would be very valuable to anyone who wanted to attack the bridge. That isn't just theory. There have not been any specific threats to our bridge, but any responsible manager of a facility like this has to be concerned. There are people being arrested for terrorist preparations."

The company official says the US Department of Homeland Security is opposed to release of bridge details of the kind contained in the report.

He said the dispute with the City of Detroit over "squatting" or fencing of city-owned land results from a homeland security department requirement that the company establish a secure perimeter of 150ft (46m) back from the bridge.

A previous Detroit Mayor approved the fencing, he said, but the present city administration is challenging it.

"We aren't doing anything with the land. It is just a secure area."

Proprietary information

Every page of the report has printed on it that it is "proprietary business information," the official said.

The bridge company has gone to court in Detroit to prevent the Federal Highway Administration from releasing the report.

However FHWA had already provided a copy of the report to Congressman John Dingell before the bridge company was able to get a restraining order.

Dingell

Congressman Dingell who represents the district and is chairman of the house energy & commerce committee has said the report should be made public. However his office is not releasing it for the time being.

The controversy has set off speculation that the report highlights major safety problems.

"No smoking gun"

"There is no smoking gun there," the bridge official told us today, "nothing that suggests an immediate safety issue."

"But there is a list of things that need to be attended to, as you would expect in an eighty year old bridge."

He said the report, which is produced annually, is used to generate a work program for the bridge, prioritizing maintenance items. Some of the work listed as needing to be done in the 2007 report has already been done.

The company official denied the report says the bridge deck is in urgent need of repair or replacement, although he said the deck will need work done on it in the years ahead. And, he conceded, bridge deck work can be very disruptive to traffic.

The bridge deck is a tight four lanes, undivided, with no shoulders.

A diesel fuelling facility for trucks in the US plaza area is not characterized as a safety hazard as some local critics have speculated, the bridge company official said. There are also underground diesel tanks to supply a large generator for backup power for the bridge in case of mains failures.

BACKGROUND: Opened in 1929 the Ambassador Bridge is a classic suspension bridge. It has a length of 2.29km (7500ft) with a main span of 565m (1850ft) and a clearance over the Detroit River of 46m (152ft). The longest bridge mainspan in the world at the time it opened it lost this title to the George Washington Bridge on the Hudson River in 1931.

In the past several years Ambassador Bridge traffic has mirrored the collapse of the once-Big Three automakers who have a concentration of plants in Ontario and Michigan.

In 2008 7.35m vehicles crossed the Ambassador bridge, 20.1k/day, a decline of 19% on 2007's 9.08m, which in turn had been a decline of 6.2% on the 9.68m in 2006.

The decline has continued during the first eight months of 2009 with traffic down 17% on the corresponding two thirds of 2008, suggesting only around 6.3m for the whole year or about 17k/day, a decline of 35% on 2006's 27k/day.

Truck traffic is about a third of the total vehicles carried, but had dropped 40% in the past three years.

From 10k/day in 2006, truck numbers have dwindled to under 6,000/day average this year. (Border operators association data)

TOLLROADSnews 2009-10-01 REVISED 2009-10-02 12:25