Blue Water Bridge to build trucks-only ramp & enlarge plaza

The Blue Water Bridge Authority has gained support of Ontario province for construction of a truck-only ramp eastbound off its bridge. The land alongside the connecting Canadian highway H-402 is owned by the province and will be transferred to the bridge authority. Under a MoU the authority will fund construction of the ramp. Separation of truck and car traffic will add to safety as well as speeding traffic off the plaza.

A provincial travel information center will also be relocated to allow the bridge to expand its plaza.

The Blue Water bridge at Sarnia ONT, Port Huron MI - about 75km (47mi) north of Detroit - is one of the few US-Ontario crossings which has managed to expand crossing capacity (though there are still backups due to inadequate US customs/immigration facilities.) It is ranked the second truck crossing between the US and Ontario (after the Ambassador Bridge in Detroit).

The bridge was twinned a few years ago (opened July 1997) and with 2x3 travel lanes it has plenty of capacity for the 5k trucks and 10k cars/day. Traffic at the Blue Water has been in slight decline in recent years. Its peak year was 1991 with 6.1m vehicles. Last year was 5.4m.

The original bridge opened in 1938 and has three 3.25m (10ft 8in) lanes on a deck of just 12m (38ft). The new span has three 3.65m (12ft) lanes on a deck of 15.6m (51ft). The bridges are 1.9km (1.2mi) long with main spans of about 270m (900ft). At a quick glance they look similar architecturally but the old one is a cantilever truss and the new one is a continuous tied arch.

Tolls are $1.75 (C$2.50) for cars and $2/axle (C$2.75) for trucks with rolls of 20 tokens $25 (C$35).

The bridge's website says (a reminder to the toll controlling province transport minister Harinder Takhar?): "There is no statutory legislation that restricts The Blue Water Bridge Authority with respect to increasing toll rates. Therefore, the BWBA can make increases to the current toll structure to reflect market conditions."

For traffic Chicago to Toronto going via the Blue Water is about the same distance as via the Detroit Windsor crossings, but the Blue Water is much faster because of motorway conditions either side, and lesser congestion. The Detroit-Windsor traffic is much larger however because of sheer size of the Detroit area and the more direct routing to Ohio and points south. see bwba.org TOLLROADSnews 2004-09-30