Deep Throat's Public Outing

The phone rang. It was Deep Throat. He wanted to meet again. Frankly I was shocked. He had never used the phone before to arrange a meeting, wiretapping fears I guess. Instead of meeting him at our usual spot, somewhere totally out of public view, he wanted to have dinner at a trendy spot on Erie Street. What gives I wondered?

“So what did you think of the Bi-national’s announcement,” he asked as we sat down for an aperitif. “Not even the bookies of Vegas would have given odds on that one! Imagine both DRTP and the Twinned Bridge gone.”

I was totally confused as usual. Just like after the Schwartz Report, it took me days to figure out that the Report did not do anything for Windsor although at first blush it seemed to give the City what it wanted.

I was overjoyed again at first with the Bi-national. The Ojibway crossing won or so it appeared. And not damaging the snakes or prairie grass or using E C Row. A win for almost everyone I thought.

“But Brian Masse attacked one of the sites already,” I said. “Isn’t he ever for anything or does he have to oppose since an election is around the corner? And as for the other site, Marko Paranosic, an engineer and Canadian project manager for Gridlock Sam Schwartz was quoted in the Star saying "You've got good bedrock from the (Ambassador) bridge north…Once you go south, you get progressively worse soil conditions." Old brine mines, rows of hydro towers and river pipelines farther south along the corridor all present risks to construction.”

Deep Throat just smiled and then pulled out the map used by the Bi-national. He pointed along the road corridor from Highwy 401 to the river. The light started flashing on in my brain. I had not heard anyone knocking that selection. In fact the tree-huggers were probably out celebrating since the Ojibway nature Complex was saved.

I had seen that route before…Wasn’t it Sam’s #4 selection? But before that, wasn’t that the Bridge Co.’s route based on the City’s WALTS study? It seemed to be the same except for a small gap going north to the Ambassador Bridge.

Then Deep Throat pulled out a Star news clipping:

• "Another consideration will be where the customs plaza will be located on the American side.
  
  The Michigan Department of Transportation, which is part of the binational team, is planning in its Gateway Project to reconfigure the roads leading to and from its end of the Ambassador Bridge. It may want to use an expanded customs plaza at the foot of the bridge for both crossings, said a source.
  “They may want to use the foot of the Ambassador Bridge and the expanded plaza there as an economy," said a source. "The expanded plaza can serve two bridges."
  
  The binational team has already said it wants to link the new crossing to the new American gateway. If the new crossing is linked to that plaza, it will make sense to build the crossing farther north, the source said."

I was flabbergasted. I had heard all of these horrible stories about the owner of the Bridge Co. It appeared from the story that not only was he going to lose a good part of his business to the new bridge, but he was going to allow his competitor to make use of the Plaza that he built and owned to help them do it. I knew it was the Christmas season but really…

Then Deep Throat took out a pen and wrote the word “BRIDGE” with a great flourish. I thought about it and then it hit me---a “Signature Bridge.”

I remembered the words of Transport Canada’s Mark Butler “We wouldn't (rule out) a bridge that would be on a diagonal. What we're saying is we want to get it as close to where the U.S. wants a landing site." We would have our tourist attraction: a diagonal bridge across the Detroit River. The cities of Windsor and Detroit could be the laughing stock of the world by having the world's longest diagonal bridge, built for political reasons. What a tourist draw that will be. I wonder if that is what Gridlock Sam meant by a "Signature Bridge."

My head was spinning now. Deep Throat just smiled in his enigmatic fashion and said, “It’s the politics, stupid!”

Politics----Sam wrote a “political” Report to help the Mayor, Governor Granholm killed the Downriver and East Bridge locations because of “political” pressure without telling anyone and so the Canucks had to get their “political” quid pro quo didn’t they or at least make it appear that way!

No one in their right mind was going to put a new crossing within a stone’s throw of the Ambassador Gateway project. It would require several hundred million dollars again and staffing at another site by US Customs. A diagonal bridge to the Gateway, absurd! And to think that the Bridge Co. would graciously go along with this was nonsense.

“I got it!” I shouted out. “This is all a diversion from the real solution. That’s how bureaucrats do it! They did it before with the 15 corridors and now they were doing it again. Why it is so Machiavellian it is brilliant”

It all fell into place now:

1) Let the Canadians think they had won and got Ojibway. The various factions within Windsor would fight the 2 selections as they already started to do so that neither would be acceptable.

2) The Delray people would also mobilize using “Environmental Justice” as their rallying cry to stop Ojibway.

3) The route to the new bridge would be ignored and, in fact, accepted since the nature complex was preserved and bigger battles over location were being fought

4) It would finally dawn on people that the Bridge Co. was the only proponent that did NOT want to use E C Row and did NOT want to go through the nature complex as a route to their crossing

5) The US side would insist on the Ambassador Gateway being used

6) Some engineer would be retained to say that a diagonal bridge would be a hazard on the Detroit River as the columnists and editorial cartoonists would mock it forcing the Mayors of Windsor and Detroit to kill the concept

7) A genius looking at the Bi-national map one day would say why don’t we go north and link up to the Ambassador Bridge and “enhance” that last bit to keep Sandwich residents happy.

“My goodness,” I said as I sank, mentally exhausted in my seat. “The Ambassador Bridge Co. won. Not only will they get their Twinned Bridge, if it is ever needed if traffic picks up, but also they will get their 200 booths project too and the road on the Windsor side to get there.”

Deep Throat laughed out loud and waving the waiter over said, “ A bottle of Dom Perignon for my friend.”