News

Faced with orders to appear before a vindictive and unconstrained county judge - 'Jailin Judge' Prentis Edwards - tomorrow (Thursday) the Ambassador Bridge company (DIBC) had a morning, Wednesday, of emergency meetings of its board of directors, senior executives, and lawyers.

The widely accepted narrative on the Ambassador Bridge Gateway legal battle repeated endlessly in the bridge company-hating Detroit media is that the details of the contested contract were clear, simple, and well understood, and that the bridge company has stubbornly refused for years now to stick to the contract or to obey a judge's order to rebuild to contract specs. And not just the local media.

A state court of appeals has overthrown the jailing of two top officials of the Ambassador Bridge, Matty Moroun and Dan Stamper by Wayne County Court judge last month.

Secret reports on the bridge company's activities at the Gateway Plaza that were the main basis for Judge Prentis Edwards jailings of two top bridge officers January 12-13 will be released after all - a partial acknowledgment of the company's complaint about abuses of procedure and lack due process.

The depth of Michigan DOT senior officials' determination to destroy the reputation of the Ambassador Bridge company (DIBC) people, and their animus, is reported in a lawyer's letter from 2009. The lawyer Kenneth C Harrison was working at the time for Walter Lubienski who owned strategically located land in the middle of the planned expanded plaza area and ramps of the Gateway project.

There's value in retaining local or regional toll authorities, and doubtful validity to claims that consolidation into a state toller will bring increased efficiencies - according to a Reason Foundation paper by Robert Poole and Daryl Fleming.

Wilbur Smith Associates (WSA) record of traffic and revenue forecasting is blasted in a study done by a retired federal government economist Terry Maynard for the Reston Citizens Association (CRA) in northern Virginia. The report supports a call for an independent review of the WSA/CDMSmith traffic and revenue forecast of the Dulles Toll Road.

The Ambassador Bridge company (DIBC) has released an annotated commentary on a Michigan DOT Question & Answer statement on the long running Gateway Plaza controversy that has generated so much heat in Detroit. This has seen expensive demolitions, demands for more demolitions and rebuilds - all located on the private land of the bridge company.

Now exposed as a principal obstructionist in the Gateway Project, Michigan Department of Transportation is at last moving to build the  S32 missing ramp that the local press had previously hung on the bridge company. MDOT says in a statement that it will begin work on the ramp "within several weeks" and it should be completed before Memorial Day holiday weekend.

The state is "expediting a contract for the work," the statement says.

TransCore has won a big statewide systems integration and maintenance contract with the Texas Turnpike division of TxDOT. TransCore was selected over Raytheon and Telvent. The work was previously done largely by different companies, TransCore already being the largest - about 135 out of 155 lanes (CORRECTION).