The Gordie Howe Bridge Finally Gets Its Opening

After months of limbo, the Gordie Howe Bridge project will finally open to traffic on Monday, 27 July. The toll bridge connecting Canada and the United States has been ready to open for weeks, but was delayed as the Trump Administration sought better terms on the deal with Canada to develop the project.

Canada and the United States have now reached an agreement in principle to open the bridge, but significant details remain to be determined. The Gordie Howe Bridge project has been a saga to say the least, but after more than seven years of construction and another (at least) 15 years of planning, predevelopment and lawsuits, the politics surrounding the new bridge appear far from over.

The latest battle over the Gordie Howe came in February, as the P3 delivering the bridge had finished major construction and was completing testing and commissioning. President Trump took to Truth Social to announce that he would not allow the bridge to open to traffic until the Administration renegotiated the project terms with Canada.

The renegotiation put Canada, and the Gordie Howe’s public sponsor there, the Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority (WDBA) in a difficult position. The Gordie Howe Bridge P3 is an availability payment concession, so Canada is backstopping the financing but also collecting the bridge’s toll revenue. Every day the bridge remained closed was a day of lost project revenue.

The Trump Administration’s position wasn’t completely sound, either. The Gordie Howe appears to enjoy strong local political support in a swing state. Both current Governor Gretchen Whitmer (a Democrat) and former Governor Rick Snyder (a Republican) have come out in support of the project’s opening in recent weeks. Even if Canada wants the bridge open the most, more and more Michiganders were likely to start questioning why a perfectly good bridge remained shut as negotiations dragged out.

The politics in Canada for a negotiated settlement were not great, either. When the opening was delayed again in June, the Mayor of Windsor wrote that “Canada need not fall on bent knee…” to get it open. Before the U.S. and Canada released the text of their proposed Agreement in Principle this week, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney characterized the terms very differently than U.S. officials. Carney told reporters in mid-July that the “splitting of tolls, any sharing of the toll, won’t happen until all of the debt is repaid.”

Agreement in Principle