Ambassador Bridge

The Ambassador Bridge, a wire suspension bridge spanning the Detroit River, links Detroit, Michigan, to Windsor, Ontario. Since its inauguration in 1929, this toll bridge has become North America’s most heavily trafficked international border crossing, accounting for over 25% of the total value of merchandise trade between the United States and Canada.

Table Of Contents

History
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History

Since the American Civil War, the route across the Detroit River between the United States and Canada has been a crucial transportation link. Ferries initially facilitated the transport of freight and people across the river. ¹ In July 1910, the Michigan Central Railroad opened a railway tunnel, followed by the Ambassador Bridge for vehicles in November 1929 and the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel in 1930. ²

The Canadian Southern Railway and other railway companies still preferred a bridge over the river instead of relying on trackage rights to move freight and passengers through a tunnel. ⁴

In 1919, shortly after World War I, Charles Evan Fowler, a prominent civil engineer from New York, proposed the construction of a bridge between Detroit and Windsor capable of accommodating automobiles, trains, streetcars, and pedestrians. ²⁵ By the early 1920s, he had established two companies – the Canadian Transit Company and the American Transit Company – and had secured support from both Parliament and Congress for his franchise. However, Fowler’s plans were deemed overly ambitious. The rail approaches for the $28 million structure were set to begin a mile inland, necessitating public guarantees for financing. Additionally, its 110-foot center height would provide only marginal clearance for shipping.

In an attempt to secure funding for Fowler’s project, Russell T. Scott organized an investment scheme that ultimately failed, resulting in the depletion of $2 million of Scott’s own funds. ²⁵ Among Fowler’s most steadfast supporters was John W. Austin, who remained determined to see the project through. He approached C. J. Marshall, a McClintic–Marshall Company principal, a reputable Pittsburgh engineering firm, to take on the project. In the mid-1920s, Marshall introduced Austin to Joseph A. Bower, a banker known for turning adversity into success. ^{11 24 25}

With Bower’s assistance, they successfully raised $23.5 million, with some backing from Henry Ford, under the newly formed Detroit International Bridge Corporation. ⁵ The plan was temporarily stopped by Detroit Mayor John Smith, who opposed a privately owned bridge, although Detroiters voted overwhelmingly in favor of the bridge construction in a referendum on June 28, 1927. ^{24 25}

Construction

Construction of the Ambassador Bridge commenced following a ceremony attended by Bower on May 7, 1927, even before the referendum had been voted upon. ²⁵ Congress stipulated that construction must commence by May 12, 1927, to prevent the expiration of the bridge franchise. Austin’s 16-year-old daughter Helen initiated the process by driving the first boring stake into the ground to ascertain the depth of the bedrock.

The general contract for construction was signed on July 20, 1927, and became effective on August 16. ²⁵ The McClintic-Marshall Company of Pittsburgh, serving as the project’s general contractor and steel erector, ^{9 10} was granted until August 16, 1930, to complete the project. ²⁵ Failure to meet this deadline would result in the engineering firm being responsible for interest on the securities until the bridge generated income. If McClintic-Marshall completed the project before the deadline, they would receive half the revenues between the bridge’s opening date and April 16, 1930.

McClintic-Marshall insisted on using the then-new heat-treated wire cables instead of the commonly employed cold-drawn steel wire. ²⁵ These new cables had undergone testing and exhibited significantly higher tensile strength than the cold-drawn steel wire previously utilized in suspension bridges.

The heat-treated wires were meticulously woven strand by strand into the 37 component cables of each of the two massive main cables on the Ambassador Bridge. ²⁵ By mid-February 1929, the suspenders, resembling steel harp strings, had been suspended from the cables, and work had commenced to secure the steel framework of the roadway to the weighted ends of these suspenders. Remarkably, progress was ahead of schedule by one year.

However, on February 22, a significant issue arose when numerous broken strands were discovered in the suspension cables of the nearly completed Mount Hope Bridge in Rhode Island. ²⁵ Like the Ambassador Bridge, this crossing was among the first to employ heat-treated wire instead of cold-drawn steel. Subsequently, it was revealed that three broken strands had been identified near the Bristol anchorage of the Mount Hope Bridge as early as January.

Further inspection of the Detroit River project revealed a few broken wires in the cables of the Ambassador Bridge, although not in alarming quantities. ²⁵ Nonetheless, McClintic-Marshall, the same engineering firm overseeing the Mount Hope Bridge construction, halted work on the Ambassador Bridge on March 1. They enlisted a team of Massachusetts Institute of Technology consultants to assess the situation and produce a report. Based on the findings, McClintic-Marshall absorbed the $500,000 cost of removing the cables over the river and replacing them with cold-drawn steel wire. This setback only caused a delay of three months in the project timeline.

The new Ambassador Bridge was completed on November 11, 1929, nine months ahead of schedule. ²⁵ It officially opened to motorists and pedestrians on November 15. ^{9 25} It was wholly owned by the Detroit International Bridge Company, a company owned by the Bower family.

The 7,490-foot-long wire suspension bridge featured a main span of 1,850 feet, making it the world’s longest suspended central span at the time, a record it held until the opening of the George Washington Bridge between New York and New Jersey in 1931. ^{24 25} It comprised a roadway 47 feet wide with an eight-foot-wide sidewalk on the west side and twin silicon steel towers at 386 feet high, resting on concrete piers on bedrock 115 feet below the surface. The anchorages, measuring 22½ feet wide and 100 feet long, were sunk into bedrock 105 feet below. The structure utilized 21,000 short tons of steel, with its suspended span supported by a Warren pony truss structure. ¹¹

American Commercial Photo Co. — The Ambassador Bridge circa 1930. Credit: American Commercial Photo Company.

Operations

The Detroit International Bridge Company’s Ambassador Bridge encountered unexpected traffic competition, a scenario not originally foreseen when the financial structure for the crossing was devised. ²⁵ This challenge was compounded by the opening of the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel in 1930 and the onset of the Great Depression.

Between 1929 and 1931, traffic on the Ambassador Bridge plummeted from 1.6 million vehicles to 1.1 million vehicles. ²⁵ Two years after its inauguration, the bridge defaulted on the interest payments for debentures and first mortgage bonds. The Detroit-Windsor Tunnel similarly faced financial difficulties.

In 1932, traffic on the bridge declined by an additional quarter million vehicles, prompting the establishment of committees to represent the bondholders’ interests. ²⁵ High taxes further hindered the Bridge Company’s financial recovery, with taxes consuming 80% of revenue in 1932 and remaining at around 75% for the subsequent three years. However, traffic gradually increased between 1935 and 1937, partly due to the completion of a 20-door Canadian Customs warehouse in December 1937, facilitating truck traffic.

In 1938, Bower reorganized the Detroit International Bridge Company in July 1939. ²⁵ By year-end, the bonds and debentures were exchanged for $133,089 in common stock out of a total of 217,175 shares issued at one dollar per share. Additionally, a property reassessment reduced taxes imposed by Detroit and Wayne County.

During World War II, traffic was again restricted, although truck traffic continued to rise despite declining passenger automobile counts. ²⁵ Canada imposed strict controls on the movement of Canadian funds out of the country, channeling toll funds from the Ambassador Bridge into Canada under the Foreign Exchange Control Board. Despite a 24% drop in revenue from car traffic in 1943, truck traffic increased due to expanded Customs warehouse facilities. By 1944, gross revenues had risen by 28%, leading to the distribution of the first dividend in the Detroit International Bridge Company’s history. Traffic surpassed one million vehicles in 1945 for the first time since 1931.

A 15% rise in traffic and revenue in 1945, coupled with increased capitalization, enabled a 100% stock dividend and a $1.05 per share dividend. ²⁵ Canada also began releasing funds held by the Canadian Transit Company to the Detroit International Bridge Company.

The Bower family maintained control over the Ambassador Bridge until 1979 when the previous owners listed it on the New York Stock Exchange. ^{6 24 25} Manuel Moroun of the Central Cartage Company purchased shares, eventually gaining control of the bridge. ^{6 25} Today, it is owned by the companies he led, the Detroit International Bridge Company in the United States ⁷ and the Canadian Transit Company in Canada. ⁸

By the dawn of the 21st century, the Ambassador Bridge had become the busiest crossing along the Canada–United States border, facilitating the passage of over 10,000 commercial vehicles on an average weekday across its four lanes. ¹³ The privately owned bridge shoulders roughly 25% of the trade between Canada and the United States. ^{14 15}

Renovations and Expansion

In the late 1950s, toll plaza structures were repainted from black to green and white. An experiment with aluminum paint on parts of the bridge proved short-lived due to pollution. ²⁵ In 1963, an Ammex Duty-Free store opened on the Detroit side, followed by various renovations and expansions to customs facilities in subsequent years.

Significant repairs to the bridge’s roadway were undertaken in 1970, including replacing granite blocks on the steep approaches with asphalt and rehabilitating the Canadian approach in 1972. ²⁵ New toll plazas were constructed in Detroit and Windsor, along with the replacement of tower signs. Each tower sign, displaying “Ambassador Bridge” in six-foot-high letters since 1933, was replaced for the first time since 1952.

In 1976, a specialized preventive maintenance program was implemented after conducting a thorough inspection of the bridge structure. ²⁵ The subsequent year marked the first replacement of the main cable band bolts as part of this program at the cost of $650,000.

Between 1995 and 2000, the Ambassador Bridge was extensively rehabilitated. ¹² It included the repairing of the superstructure in a teal color.

Controversy

The Gateway Project, which was supposed to conclude in July 2009, featured a significant overhaul of the customs plaza in Detroit while adding direct access to Interstates 96 and 75 on the American side and Ontario Highway 3 on the Canadian side.

Between 2010 and 2011, the Wayne County Circuit Court held the Detroit International Bridge Company in contempt for failing to establish direct connections between the bridge access roads, Interstates 75 and 96, and other mandated improvements under the Michigan Department of Transportation’s Gateway Project. ¹⁵ The Gateway Project was a complete realignment of Interstate 75 from Rosa Parks Boulevard to Clark Street to connect the Ambassador Bridge to the freeway directly. The improvements from the freeway to the Ambassador Bridge, which would normally be under the control of the state of Michigan, were left to Moroun, who never completed the ramps between the interstate and the bridge. ¹⁶

In January 2012, Moroun and his company’s chief deputy, Dan Stamper, were jailed for failing to complete the ramps. ^{16 17}

Following years of legal disputes, local activism against neighborhood truck traffic, and delays instigated by Matty Moroun, the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) assumed control of the Interstates 75 and 96 direct connector project. After a six-month construction period, the ramps were opened in September 2012. ¹⁷

In 2015, Windsor city officials voiced concerns over the bridge’s deteriorating condition and highlighted the danger of crumbling concrete from its superstructure. In response, Matt Moroun accused the city of obstructing the company’s efforts to either rebuild or repair the structure, citing Canadian government support for plans to construct a new bridge across the Detroit River downstream. ¹⁸

Supplemental Bridge

In the early 2000s, a bi-national partnership comprising the U.S. Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), Transport Canada, the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT), and the Ontario Ministry of Transportation (OMT) began exploring the need for a future crossing of the Detroit River. ³ This project was known as the Detroit River International Crossing and the New International Trade Crossing, leading to the construction of the Gordie Howe International Bridge.

Manuel Moroun, the proprietor of the Ambassador Bridge, staunchly opposed any plans for a new bridge, initiating multiple lawsuits against the governments of Canada and Michigan to impede its construction. ¹⁹ Moroun proposed constructing a second parallel crossing adjacent to the Ambassador Bridge. Critics speculated that Moroun’s opposition stemmed from potential losses in profits from duty-free gasoline sales, which are exempt from approximately 60 cents per gallon in taxes, despite only a slight reduction in consumer pump prices. ²⁰ However, Moroun and his Detroit International Bridge Company argued that the proposed new bridge would interfere with their plans for a second span to be built alongside the existing Ambassador Bridge.

In 2007, the privately owned bridge company obtained permission from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality to construct a new bridge across the Detroit River alongside the current span. This permit expired in 2012. ²¹ Subsequently, the U.S. Coast Guard issued a permit to the bridge company in 2016 to construct the new span. However, as of 2021, construction cannot proceed until the current bridge owner, Matthew Moroun, resolves a “conflict” regarding the bridge’s permit issued by Transport Canada in 2017 for the Canadian side. The Coast Guard’s permit stipulated that the existing Ambassador Bridge must be preserved and rehabilitated, whereas Transport Canada’s permit required the dismantling and removing the existing bridge. ²²

In 2022, the five-year construction permit issued by Transport Canada expired, bringing any development work on a parallel or replacement Ambassador Bridge to a halt. ²³

Gallery

Details

State: Michigan, Ontario
Route: N/A
Status: Active (Automobile)
Type: Wire Suspension
Total Length: 7,500'
Main Span Length: 1,850'
Spans: 0
Deck Width: 56'
Roadway Width: 47'
Height of Structure: 386'
Above Vertical Clearance: 0
Navigational Clearance: 152'

Sources

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