Lots of trouble under the bridge
By Chris Sorensen - Wednesday, April 20, 2011 - 7 Comments
A battle over a new bridge linking Windsor and Detroit heats up
Dave Chidley/CP
Michigan’s newly elected Republican governor, Rick Snyder, recently endorsed a proposed US$2-billion bridge linking Detroit, Mich., with Windsor, Ont., over the Detroit River. The new span, first pitched back in 2004, is deemed necessary to alleviate chronic congestion at the nearby Ambassador Bridge, which was erected in 1929 and is now the busiest crossing between Canada and the United States, the world’s biggest trading partners.
Just one problem. The Ambassador Bridge is, unusually, a privately owned and operated crossing, and Michigan’s wealthy Moroun family, headed by 83-year-old Manuel “Matty” Moroun, is fighting tooth and nail to protect the value of its 1979 investment in this key piece of international infrastructure. The reclusive family also owns a trucking empire and huge swaths of property in both Windsor and Detroit, much of which has fallen into disrepair. With the state’s legislature set to vote on the New International Trade Crossing proposal this spring, the Ambassador Bridge’s owners recently launched a US$400,000 ad campaign to convince Michigan voters that a competing, publicly funded bridge would be a huge boondoggle.
To get their point across to legislators, the Morouns also hired Fox News analyst Dick Morris as a lobbyist. Morris, a one-time Clinton adviser who now speaks at Tea Party events, has painted the bridge as yet another case of reckless government spending, which threatens to resonate in a state hit hard by the recession and grappling with a US$1.4-billion budget shortfall. “I’m delighted we have a Republican governor, I just wish he’d act like one,” he said of Snyder during a recent interview with a local Detroit radio station.
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We’ll build half and hope for the best
By Tom Henheffer - Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 2:20 PM - 2 Comments
Will the Detroit bridge get built? A Michigan senator says ‘no.’
Do we need a second bridge linking Windsor and Detroit? The Canadian government says yes, and has already spent $34 million on the project, but politicians on the U.S. side are calling it a bridge to nowhere.Mark Butler, a spokesperson for Transport Canada, says a new bridge is needed, and a private-public partnership is being explored to build it. The government would own the bridge, while a private company pays for its construction and collects tolls. Ottawa has already spent $34 million on 94 acres of land in Windsor, Ont., for the project, and it plans to buy another 202 acres for construction, which has an estimated cost of $1 billion. Continue…
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The decline of the North American car
By Colin Campbell - Thursday, November 20, 2008 at 8:00 AM - 36 Comments
As GM files bankruptcy, a look at who’s to blame and what’s next for the U.S. auto industry
UPDATE (June 1, 2009): General Motors, the once proud icon of U.S. capitalism, filed for bankruptcy Monday. In the following piece, published last November in Maclean’s, Colin Campbell navigates through the rise and fall of the U.S. auto industry. In doing so, he identifies what went wrong at GM and explains whether the car company is even worth saving.
In hall No. 5, tucked far away from the main action at the high-profile Paris Motor Show last month, visitors who looked hard enough would have found the booth belonging to General Motors Corp. Those who went to the trouble—and not many did—were disappointed with what they found.
Paris was the place GM had decided to raise the curtain on a critical piece of its future in a world increasingly focused on efficiency and economy—the Chevy Cruze. The Detroit company is pinning its hopes on the lightweight Cruze to lure car buyers in Asia, Europe and North America away from bestsellers like the Honda Civic. Yet there were none of the usual showbiz trappings at its unveiling: no models leaning against the hood, no rock-concert special effects to usher in the age of the Cruze. Just a plain white stage and the car itself: a conventional, even understated, four-door family sedan. It “had all the pomp and circumstance of a Tuesday,” noted one auto critic. Perhaps it was just as well then that few journalists bothered to show up.
Most automakers look to the Paris show to highlight their next small, fuel-efficient wonders. It’s a science fair disguised as a car show. Mercedes-Benz and BMW were unveiling their first hybrids. Nissan snagged attention with its tiny Nuvu. Hyundai brought along its new mini-car, the i20. But at GM’s second-floor exhibit, visitors were confronted by a collection of massive Hummers and a hulking Cadillac Escalade. “This was emblematic of GM,” says Maryann Keller, an independent auto analyst who has covered the industry since the 1970s. “Here’s this show dedicated to small cars, new technologies, electric vehicles. Why, to Paris, would you bring Hummers, the Escalade and a Camaro? What planet are you on?” Continue…
