The Gordie Howe International Bridge will save commuters, truckers and recreational travelers more than 420,000 hours per year, according to federal and state projections. That’s about 25 million minutes or 48 years.
The average savings per trip across the U.S.-Canada border is less eye-popping, at about 1 minute and 45 seconds. But the time adds up to a significant economic impact and quality-of-life upgrade at the second-busiest border crossing in North America.
“The biggest issue is time,” said Paul Russo, president of Wayne-based Wayne Industries Inc., which operates 85 trucks hauling steel between Michigan, Ohio and Ontario. “We need to save every minute we can save to be productive.”
The Gordie Howe Bridge — scheduled to finally open Monday after six months at the center of international political drama, eight years of construction and more than two decades since it was first proposed — will save travelers time and money by diverting traffic away from other major crossings and through tolls that are cheaper than fees to cross the longstanding Ambassador Bridge.
The impact on the trucking industry will be especially profound. The crossing between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, is a major supply chain artery for the region’s manufacturing-heavy economy and a key logistics gateway to much of the United States. Previously, shippers at the Port of Detroit had only one option: the privately owned Ambassador Bridge.
Operators of that nearly century-old span, who fiercely lobbied at the state and federal levels to stop a competing bridge from opening, have jacked up toll rates so high in recent years that a majority of shippers started routing trucks some 65 miles north via the Blue Water Bridge connecting Port Huron to Sarnia on the Canadian side.
“There’s nothing wrong with a little bit of competition,” Russo said. “Competition is healthy. It’s good. It makes you smarter. Makes you think how can you do things quicker, easier, faster. That’s all good for the transportation industry and it’s also good for people. People don’t like sitting on bridges.”
Far cheaper tolls at the Gordie
Tolls to cross the Gordie Howe Bridge will be less than half the tolls at the competing Ambassador Bridge for commercial trucks and more than $1 cheaper for passenger vehicles, the Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority announced in March.
Commercial shippers that sign up for the Gordie’s “Breakaway” discount toll program will pay charges of 6.90 U.S. dollars per axle, the bridge’s operators said. That comes out to $34.50 for typical five-axle semi-trucks.
By contrast, the comparable rate for A-Pass and E-ZPass holders crossing the Ambassador Bridge is 15 U.S. dollars per axle, or $75 total for the most common type of truck. The commercial rate was 5 U.S. dollars per axle for Class A trucks as recently as 2021, but bridge operators hiked rates by $10 per axle since then.
The cumulative toll cost advantage of $40.50 at the Gordie Howe versus the Ambassador is immediately attractive to logistics companies that perform hundreds or thousands of cross-border deliveries every year.
“When you look at the numbers, the Gordie Howe Bridge is entering the market very competitively,” said Melissa Dean, chief administrative officer for Pontiac-based LMM. “For trucking specifically, you’re talking about per-axle costs that are materially lower, plus discounts for fleet accounts that can drop rates even further. That makes a difference at scale.”
LMM moves industrial equipment across the border dozens of times each year, primarily through the Ambassador Bridge, Dean said. The trucking executive said she expects that to change, with the Gordie becoming her business’s primary crossing.
“At the company level, lower tolls and faster crossings directly reduce our cost per move,” Dean said. “If you’re running multi-axle equipment or coordinated convoy loads, that savings compounds quickly. There are estimates that fleets could save tens of thousands of dollars per month depending on volume, just from toll differentials alone.”
Passengers save money, too
For passenger vehicles, the Breakaway toll on the Gordie Howe Bridge will be $4.35 USD per crossing. The minimum rate available on the Ambassador was more than double that at $10 until recently. The privately owned bridge cut the rate in half to $5 in April, likely in anticipation of competition from the rival crossing.
The Gordie Howe Bridge will also be cheaper to cross than the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel, which charges $6.75 to enter Windsor and $4.70 to enter Detroit. That crossing does not allow freight trucks.
The Detroit International Bridge Co., the Moroun family firm that operates the Ambassador Bridge, did not return requests for comment on the toll differences between the crossings.
Gary LaPointe, a 60-year-old educator who lives in Dearborn, said he has not crossed the border into Canada in years but will consider doing so thanks to the new bridge opening. “I just think it’s kind of exciting that we’re getting another way to get people in and out,” he said in a phone interview.
“I know when I’m downtown and look at the (Ambassador) bridge, I can see it’s backed up,” he said. “So I’m hoping this makes it better for people who are always going over there. And if it really smooths things out, maybe I’ll go to Canada more.”
The second-grade teacher added that the bridge opening should be cause for celebration. “People are excited about this. We should be out there with food trucks, unicyclists and music or whatever,” LaPointe joked. He said he is especially excited to walk and bike across the new span, adding that such a visit could be an “awesome” field trip for his students.
Time savings from dispersed traffic
There were about 13 million total trips across the existing Ambassador Bridge, Detroit-Windsor Tunnel and Blue Water Bridge in 2025. The Gordie Howe Bridge is projected to absorb roughly one-third of those, according to a January filing by the Department of Homeland Security.
That diversion of traffic to a new transportation artery will save both passenger and commercial vehicles significant time, averaging about 1 minute and 45 seconds per trip and about 420,000 hours. Exact savings, however, will vary by previous crossing option, destination, time of day and seasonal factors.
For example, the federal report projected that passenger vehicles traveling from Highway 401 in Canada to I-75 in Michigan would save an average of 8 minutes per trip by switching from the Detroit-Windsor tunnel to the new Gordie Howe Bridge, which links those two highways. Travelers in the other direction are projected to save 7 minutes per trip.
The time savings are less robust for travelers going to or from Highway 401 to I-96 in Michigan, a highway more directly accessible from the old Ambassador Bridge. Current Ambassador users making trips along the route would likely have negligible time savings or losses by switching to the Gordie Howe, and tunnel users for the route would save about 3 minutes by using the new bridge.
Travelers who prefer to stick with the tunnel regardless of where they are going or coming from will still, on average, see some time savings thanks to the diversion of traffic to the new bridge. The average queue will drop from about 3 minutes and 18 seconds prior to the Gordie Howe opening to 1 minute and 54 seconds after.
The DHS filing, which contains a trove of data on how the new span could alter traffic in the region, relied on previous state-solicited estimates to make updated projections. It was released by the Trump administration days before President Donald Trump himself suddenly stated his opposition to the bridge opening in February.
The report estimated the economic benefit from time savings at more than $12.5 million per year based on an average wage rate for truckers ($33.50 per hour) and a Department of Transportation figure ($26.60 per hour) for how much Americans value time savings on the road.
For commercial carriers, even modest reductions in congestion can bring savings.
Dean, with LMM, said the bridge’s freeway-to-freeway connection will eliminate travel on surface streets and make routes for oversized loads much simpler. The bridge’s direct connection to I-75 aligns with the company’s strategy, she said, noting its Pontiac headquarters sits near I-75 and M-59 to give them easy access to major routes. She also expects the bridge to cut labor costs and reduce wear and tear on trucks and trailers.
“The biggest thing, when you have to take city roads or county roads or anything other than a railway road, you generally, especially if you’re carrying overweight or overweight loads, you need to get permits,” she said.
“And each city or county road you take is a different set of permits. Taking the Gordie Howe Bridge eliminates nearly all of that for us.”
gschwab@detroitnews.com
cwilliams@detroitnews.com
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Gordie Howe Bridge to open with low tolls, massive time savings
Reporting by Grant Schwab and Candice Williams, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Grant Schwab and Candice Williams, The Detroit News | USA TODAY Network
