Let Maroun Build the Bridge

Everyone appears to agree that we need a new bridge linking Detroit to Windsor. Yet nobody seems to agree on the best plan. Part of the problem is that both plans, one by Ambassador Bridge owner Matty Maroun and the other by the State of Michigan, have their good points. And their bad.

Under the Maroun plan, much of the cost would be privately covered. In this day and age of vast overspending by governments on all levels, this must be seen as a positive. Yet there are those who don't believe that an international structure such as this one necessarily is, ought to be furnished by private sources. Quite frankly, that's rubbish. A bridge need not come under national domain of any type, if it can be done privately and willingly.

The main advantage to the government plan, or the NITC (New International Trade Crossing) is that it would be farther downriver, and would not have trucks emptying onto surface roads in Windsor. Yet isn't that what's happening now? Is it all that bad?

To be sure, Maroun would be wise to heed whatever legitimate advice any of the governments, US and Canadian federal and the provincial and state governments of Ontario and Michigan, may offer. There's no big reason which we can see why Maroun should not be open to building a bridge father away other than whatever costs he's already, and perhaps ill advisedly, spend in creating the approaches next to the Ambassador Bridge.

In the end, as Michigan Lt. Governor Brian Calley, who is spearheading the drive for the NITC, asserts, the government plan will win out. He's probably right. Government power has become too great for any individual, even a vastly wealthy one such as Matty Maroun, to prevail once it decides that its presumed 'public' interest is the greater, more moral point. That's a shame on two fronts: as yet another example of unnecessary government intrusion, of outright government arrogance, on what ought to be a private matter, and as the taxpayers will be forced to cover a bill another person is willing to cover for them.

Maroun ought to be allowed to build the new bridge. But he won't be. And the real losers will be the people who actually will foot the bill.