For residents of Detroit, it is not news that the Ambassador Bridge spans the border between the United States and Canada and carries roughly a quarter of US-Canada trade. With 4 million trucks crossing in 2024, it’s easy to imagine the additional traffic generated today. The four-lane Ambassador Bridge sees approximately 11,000 trucks daily and experiences significant backups.
If you had asked Canadian officials in 2018 what their solution might be, they likely would have pointed to the construction of the Gordie Howe International Bridge. At the time, the project was scheduled to be completed in the upcoming years. Eight years later, that day arrived! On July 27th, 2026, The Gordie Howe International Bridge officially opened, providing an alternative and efficient transportation route for travel and trade between United States and Canada.
Will the opening of this new bridge alleviate traffic jams that came from Ambassador Bridge, or will it make the traffic worse?
With a new six-lane connection between I-75 in Detroit and Highway 401 in Ontario, the Gordie Howe Bridge was designed to remove heavy commercial trucks from local streets and eliminate the dozens of traffic lights that surround the entry points to the Ambassador Bridge. The new bridge also has a competitive discount toll program and is expected to provide smoother customs processing to reduce delays and backups.
According to Tony Trocki, Vice President of Transportation at Evans Distribution Systems, there are several key benefits to the Gordie Howe Bridge:
- Separation between commercial and consumer use.
- State-of-the-art toll and inspection technology including 16 tolls and 60 inspection lanes.
- Dynamic lanes open and close based on real-time traffic patterns.
- Safety technology on the bridge speed up response time to traffic incidents or weather events.
- 24/5 onsite traffic operations management.
- Real-time calculations of border travel and wait times.
“These features mean that trucks can get through the crossing faster, carry more loads per day or week, and can still be guaranteed to get home at night,” Trocki says. “It has been difficult to find drivers who want to travel cross-border because the old bridge did not support the demands of present-day trade in the region. Now we have a solution that can.”
Evans Distribution Systems remains confident that the Gordie Howe Bridge will create new opportunities for trade and travel between the United States and Canada.
Watch Dawn Harthun, Vice President of Sales & Marketing, explain the significance of opening the International Gordie Howe Bridge, which comes nearly a century after the founding of Evans Distribution Systems.