BRIDGES & BOTTLENECKS.
There’s lots of talk about bridges. Spans. Things that cross rivers between two separate sovereign nations, and may or may not be owned by a private individual, which may or may not be needed, may or may not be affordable, and may or may not be built by either Satanic Robber Barons or a Soviet of Private-Property-Hating Bolsheviki. But I’m not going to talk about bridges, but customs.
I just got home from visiting Daughter #1 in Upstate New York, via the northern route, which involves a trip through Canada. Up to the Blue Water, shoot across to Niagara; what could be simpler? Two bridges, two customs, outbound and then back again. Four in all.
I'm a Scientific Guy! So Let's Do Some Science.
Now I’m a scientific kind of guy, and I believe in dashboards and measureable measures. So I decided to use our trip to scientifically examine bridges and customs. And here are the results.
The Results:
I) USA to Canada at Blue Water. Time spent crossing the bridge: 50 seconds. Time spent at customs: in, 8:15. Time Out, 8:25. Total: 10 minutes. Piece of cake. We show our passports, and the customs guy smiles, and lets us go. I rarely have trouble at the Canadian customs side, and the two times I did were with French Canadian customs agents. I don’t know what arouses the inner Inspector Clouseau in the heart of your average Quebecois, but whatever it is, I have it. Shrug. C’est ca. Total time spent talking to customs agent: 45 seconds.
II) Canada to USA, Niagara. Time crossing the bridge: hard to say. We waited in the “cars” lane on the bridge, but that was because of the customs backup. The bridge lanes dedicated to truck traffic were empty. Customs time in: 12:08. Time out 12:46. Total: 38 Minutes. Four customs bays for general auto/RVs. One for NEXUS Fast Pass. Now, people, there is a Law of the Universe: Whatever Line You Are In Will Be The Wrong One. Depend on it. Left and right, they whizz past you. In your line, three cars up, the guy in the RV is wrangling with the customs guy. HINT: if a transaction takes longer than 45 seconds, pull the vehicle over to the side!!! Total time spent talking to customs agent: 45 seconds.
III) USA to Canada, Niagara: Time spent on the bridge: 30 seconds. Customs time: in 12:38. Time out, 12: 55 Total: 15 minutes, including waiting at the tollbooth. Time spent talking to Anglophone customs agent: 45 seconds. Now, I had questions I wanted to ask him, like “How’s the English/French thing working out?” But I didn’t.
IV) Canada to USA. Blue Water. Time on the bridge 1 min, 26 seconds. Customs time: in 4:32. Time out: 5:00. Total: 27 minutes. Time talking to customs agent: 45 seconds. There were 8 general auto/RV bays. And more NEXUS pass ones, plus trucks. I was In The Wrong Line, behind a RV. HINT: if the transaction takes longer than 45 seconds, use the laser and let the next guy through.
FINDINGS:
TOTAL TIME SPENT CROSSING BRIDGES: 3 MINS, 43 SECONDS. (Not counting Niagara bridge waiting time which was part of customs line.)
TOTAL TIME SPENT TALKING TO CUSTOMS AGENTS: 180 SECONDS. 45 seconds per.
TOTAL TIME WAITING IN LINE FOR CUSTOMS: Canadian customs: 25 mins. USA customs: 1 hour, 5 mins.
NOTE: on none of the four customs crossings did we wait due to insufficient carrying capacity of the bridge. On each crossing, the bridge could have been 90 lanes wide each way, and we still would have waited at customs. At US customs.
CONCLUSIONS:
Whatever solution is or is not devised for any downriver bridge between Detroit and Canada, unless you can reduce the waiting time for US customs, any money spent on any span will not shorten the wait times, relieve congestion, ignite a manufacturing renaissance, or make me want to shoot over to Windsor for a couple of hours to legally smoke Cuban cigars. The bottleneck is not bridge capacity, but customs—US customs. Without speeding up the time spent in customs—US customs-- the rest is just what nous amis Quebecois would call silly merde. C’est vrai, mon vieux!
And if you really want to save hundreds of millions of dollars, just mandate that if a customs transaction takes longer than 45 seconds, pull whatever it is out of the line and send it to Zug Island.
