Lt. Governor Brian Calley addresses Detroit City Council on bridge crossing

DETROIT (Tell Us Det) - Detroit City Council President Charles Pugh called a committee of the whole meeting Thursday afternoon in the Council Chamber to discuss the new International bridge Crossing with Michigan Lt Governor Brian Calley.

During his address to council, Calley called the Ambassador Bridge "the worst bottleneck in the entire Pan-American freeway system" and pledged that a new span would create thousands of jobs and increase trade between the U.S. and Canada.

The visit by Calley in person, and Governor Rick Snyder via phone speaker, was part of an effort to ramp up support for the proposed bridge project.

In order to create jobs for citizens and grow the local economy, Detroit City Council President Pugh believes that we can accelerate the growth of our economy by concentrating investment in our core economic strengths – one of those is trade.

Most council members believe a new bridge is needed so that the Detroit-Windsor border crossing remains competitive with other US-Canadian border crossings. The construction of another bridge is also critical to realizing the shared vision of making the Detroit region a global hub for international commerce.

While the New International Border Crossing has been discussed by Governor Rick Snyder and debated in the news, this was Detroit City Council’s first opportunity to weigh in on this very critical discussion in order to determine which bridge initiative they should support.

Officials of the privately owned Ambassador Bridge oppose the new bridge and say they want to add a new span to their own bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario.

Gov. Rick Snyder and many businesses want to build a new Detroit-Windsor bridge to aid passenger and commercial traffic. It would be backed by private investors, and Michigan would rely on $550 million from Canada for related improvements.