MDOT will open the Ambassador Bridge Gateway Project truck road today, four days ahead of schedule.
Well, “ahead of schedule” is a bit of a term of art here as the Gateway was supposed to have been finished years ago. However, a teensy-weeny legal disagreement between state officials and the Detroit International Bridge Company slowed things down a bit.
You may remember how, after more than two years of legal squabbling, a couple civil contempt citations, and the jailing of a billionaire, Wayne County Circuit Judge Prentis Edwards finally handed the project to MDOT since DIBC couldn’t seem to ever, you know, build what they promised when they signed the Gateway contract.
But now the truck road—a key piece of the remaining Gateway work—is complete and trucks that once clogged Fort Street will now use this dedicated road to approach the Ambassador Bridge.
That it took the government just a couple months to construct the road after so much legal wrangling is telling.
After all, governments are inherently inefficient animals. And for good reasons. When government agencies get too efficient, they tend to do terrible things like invade Poland or tow cars parked outside Cliff Bells.
Yet, here’s the state finally getting that truck road finished and there’s the Bridge Company, sitting there like chumps.
All of which merits asking the question: Who do you want in charge of building the next bridge to Canada?
