Over 41K crossed Gordie Howe bridge into Canada in first 5 days: StatCan

More than 41,000 people crossed the new Gordie Howe International Bridge from the U.S. into Canada in its first five days of operation, Statistics Canada said Tuesday.

The agency says preliminary inbound traffic figures show 18,900 Canadian resident return trips to Windsor from Detroit between July 27 and 31.

During the same period, 18,100 U.S. residents crossed the bridge to enter Canada, while 4,100 commercial transport trucks travelled the span over the Detroit River into Canada.

StatCan says the other border crossings in the region — the Ambassador Bridge and the Windsor-Detroit Tunnel — saw a combined 52,700 inbound trips by Canadians and U.S. residents over the same five days. That number included 31,500 return trips by Canadian residents.

The data was released as part of an overall snapshot of cross-border travel in July, which showed an uptick in both Canadian resident return trips and U.S. resident travel to Canada.

In data provided to Global News, the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics said an estimated 4,000 trucks entered the United States by crossing the Gordie Howe bridge from July 27 to 31, on par with commercial crossings into Canada during those five days.

However, fewer passengers crossed into the U.S. in personal vehicles, with 37,000 estimated entries. The data did not distinguish between Canadian and American residents.

The Gordie Howe bridge, intended to boost commercial and passenger traffic between Canada and the U.S. and ease gridlock for the other regional crossings, finally opened on July 27 after weeks of delays.

The Canadian government paid the entirety of the bridge’s $6.4-billion construction cost under a revenue-sharing agreement with Michigan that would see Canada recoup its debt before splitting the tolls.

But protests from the Trump administration led to a new agreement that will see Canada and the U.S. share those revenues for the first 15 years, which has drawn scrutiny and created confusion.

Both countries have sought to celebrate the bridge’s opening as a symbol of cross-border ties and co-operation despite the delays and ongoing trade tensions. Several political leaders, including Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, crossed the bridge on its opening day.

U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin, Democrat of Michigan, posted a video to social media on Tuesday showing her driving over the bridge for the first time, writing that she had been “chomping at the bit” to do so since it opened.

“It’s so pristine,” she says in the video as she drives. “You just think about the thousands of people who worked on this bridge, the millions of Michiganders who have been following the progress all this time.

“While we had some hiccups with the Trump administration at the very end, we opened it, and it’s the living embodiment of our connection with the Canadians and I think just a really important, very bipartisan symbol of the importance as a state, the role of trade and manufacturing, the role of our supply chains here.”

Reporting for CityAM Canada on canada and the wider Canadian economy.

An IT consultant was ordered to repay £50,000 to his employer after being accused of stealing the personal details of members of London’s biggest private members’ club. Amit Sharma allegedly threatened to leak personal information of more than 50,000 members of Soho House unless he was sent a “seven figure” sum following a dispute over […]