Massive U.S.-Canada bridge is just months away from opening
The enormous Gordie Howe International Bridge connecting Detroit and Windsor on the U.S.-Canada border is now just months away from opening, and the record-breaking project just surpassed another key milestone on its race to a planned fall completion.
The new title-holder for the longest cable-stayed bridge span in North America is looking much less like a construction site, as the pair of massive cranes used to construct the international crossing have been decommissioned.
Last week, the project team announced that “After five years, the two massive tower cranes on either side of the Detroit River are retiring from the Gordie Howe International Bridge project.”
Installed over a three-day process in 2020, the cranes were used to assist in the construction of the bridge’s support towers, which topped out 220 metres/722 feet above the Detroit River last year.
During the formation of these concrete towers, the cranes were incrementally raised in a process known as “self-climbing” and eventually reached maximum heights of 243 metres/797 feet.
The cranes on each side of the border — differentiated through their blue and red paint jobs — were removed in a similar process as they ascended.
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This same self-climbing process was carried out in reverse, descending until hitting a reachable height before being carted off in sections with the help of a giant 600-ton crawler crane with a boom arm that can reach 165 metres.
On the Ontario side of the crossing, the Canadian crane was fully dismantled in May. Once the crawler crane was done with the removal of the red-painted Canadian crane, it was dismantled and trucked across the bridge in over 40 trips to begin work on dismantling the U.S. crane, a task expected to wrap up by the end of June.
The removal of the two cranes is a huge step forward for the impressive new crossing, but there is still plenty of work to go before a previously announced September opening — a date that appears to have been swapped out for a less specific “fall” window.
Among the remaining work left to accomplish for the new bridge, crews are racing to complete installation of electrical, drainage, fire suppression systems, barriers, signage, lighting, pavement markings, and a multi-use path that will allow pedestrians and cyclists to cross the bridge without a car.
The bridge will close a missing link in the busy international trucking route between Ontario and Michigan, relieving the existing Ambassador Bridge of freight traffic and easing cross-border car trips.
However, the bridge’s high trade capacity and massive border facilities were all designed during a very different era of cross-border relations.
The decline in Canadian tourists crossing into the U.S. and campaigns to boycott American products could very well stand in the way of the $6.4 billion bridge reaching its full potential, and even with a thaw in the fierce annexation rhetoric seen months earlier, many Canadians are still steering clear of their neighbours’ products and destinations.