windsor

In Detroit the Ambassador Bridge company (DIBC) lost another round in court this week in its epic legal struggle with MIchigan DOT. In a largely technical case the state Court of Appeals refused to intervene against the rulings in favor of MDOT by Wayne County Judge Prentis Edwards.

The Ambassador Bridge company's Matthew Moroun got publicity this week at a news conference in the Michigan capital of Lansing offering to let the state use bridge "toll credits" to bring in $1 billion and $1.16 billion in federal highway grants.

Up there on the cold Canadian border they've decided the bridge name DRIC is rather drack.  So they're on a  quest for a catchier name for the $5+ billion new toll bridge they want to build Detroit to Windsor.

Detroit News reporter Jeff Wattrick suggests the DRIC be renamed the Gordie Howe Bridge.

Anywhere else it would hardly rate as news at all: the lameduck session of the Michigan state senate deciding to take no action on enabling legislation for a new $5.3b Detroit-Windsor toll bridge that the senate had been taking no action over all this year.  But passions run higher in these parts over bridge issues than over football, Obama, GM, Palin, basketball, Iraq...

The Canadians are spending $1.6 billion dollars of their taxpayer money on a beautiful Windsor Essex Parkway (WEP) to serve an international bridge that won't be built - the DRIC bridge or fourth crossing Michigan-Ontario. The recent American elections have brought to power a Republican governor, Rick Snyder, pledged to reduce waste and contain government spending, who has declared he favors the DRIC Bridge so long as it doesn't put taxpayers on the hook.

There's a new traffic study on possible future traffic at the US-Canada Detroit River crossing that is far less optimistic than the study done for Michigan DOT by Wilbur Smith Associates (WSA). Conducted by British-based international consultants Halcrow the rival traffic study was commissioned by the Ambassador Bridge company.

The Ambassador Bridge company has lost its appeal against a major demolition order obtained by the state. Judge Cynthia Stephens presiding officer of the Michigan Court of Appeals today denied leave to appeal, and a motion to stay the demolition order, saying simply that the bridge company had "failed to persuade the Court." (see nearby)