May 14--WASHINGTON -- The pitched battle over who gets to build a second bridge span crossing the Detroit River has landed in court, with the private owner of the existing Ambassador Bridge arguing that supporters of a proposed rival span are protecting a predominately white, middle-class neighborhood across the border in Windsor, Ontario, while sacrificing a neighborhood of poor Hispanics and blacks in southwest Detroit.
The Detroit International Bridge Co. -- controlled by trucking magnate Manuel (Matty) Moroun and owner of the 80-year-old Ambassador Bridge, the busiest trade crossing in North America -- filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. today alleging that federal highway officials violated the law by signing off on an environmental impact study of a rival bridge to be located a little more than a mile downriver.
Dan Stamper, president of the bridge company, called the approval process "a sham from the beginning," saying the rival bridge's supporters -- among them federal, state and provincial officials in Canada and the United States -- were promoting a bridge designed to siphon traffic away from the Ambassador Bridge and its own proposed second span by publishing erroneous traffic statistics and potentially wasting billions of taxpayer dollars.
The lawsuit named the Federal Highway Administration and its Michigan director, James Steele, as defendants and asked that backers of the so-called Detroit River International Crossing, or DRIC, be stopped from taking any more steps toward building the span, including the acquisition of property in Detroit's Delray neighborhood.
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