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1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 PROJECT OVERVIEW

The Gordie Howe International Bridge Project (formerly known as the Detroit River International Crossing) is the result of a bi-national transportation study that has been undertaken by a partnership of government agencies, comprising the following provincial, state, and national transportation authorities from both Canada and the United States:

The objective of the new international crossing is to provide for the safe, secure and efficient movement of people and goods between southwest Ontario and southeast Michigan, while minimizing environmental and community impacts.

The bi-national international crossing represents an end-to-end border transportation system that connects the freeway systems in Canada and the United States with a new international border crossing that is served by border inspection facilities on both sides of the Detroit River. The Ontario access road, the Rt. Hon. Herb Gray Parkway has been largely completed, the next portion of the Canadian infrastructure for the crossing is the development of the Canadian Port of Entry (POE). The Early Works include three key components:

  1. Construction of a perimeter access road;
  2. Relocation of utilities; and
  3. Placement of fill, grading and drainage on the site.

The Canadian portion of the overall end-to-end transportation system is located in the City of Windsor, the Town of Lasalle and the Town of Tecumseh, in the County of Essex in southwest Ontario (See Figure 1). The United States portion of the transportation system is located in the City of Detroit, in Wayne County, Michigan (See Figure 1).

The Early Works portion of the GHIB project will be completed under an individual contract solely to prepare and develop the site to be free of any encumbrances for the construction of the bridge and plaza. It should be noted that all works relating to Healy Drain will be completed during Early Works. Once the Early Works are complete, the next phase of the GHIB crossing project will be contracted through a Public-Private Partnership (P3) procurement / project delivery model. The P3 contractor will be selected to design, build, finance, operate and maintain the new bridge crossing and port of entries and the Michigan interchange. The bi-national partnership worked together to identify, refine and evaluate a broad range of alternatives and selected suitable site locations through comparable environmental study processes. Locations for the new bridge crossing, associated port of entries, as well as the Ontario access road and Michigan Interchange in both countries were selected in this manner.