On This Day

Monday 3rd November 1930

89 years ago

The first vehicular tunnel to a foreign country opened, from Detroit (US) to Windsor (Canada). At 120 feet short of a mile, the underwater tunnel carries 13,000 vehicles daily. The Detroit–Windsor Tunnel was built by the firm Parsons, Klapp, Brinckerhoff and Douglas (the same firm that built the Holland Tunnel). The executive engineer was Burnside A. Value, the engineer of design was Norwegian-American engineer Søren Anton Thoresen, while fellow Norwegian-American Ole Singstad consulted, and designed the ventilation. The method used to construct the tunnel was immersed tube (sections of steel tube floated into place and sunk into a trench dug in the river bottom). The tunnel sections have three main levels. The bottom level brings in fresh air under pressure, which is forced into the mid level, where the traffic lanes are located, and the third level is where the engine exhaust is forced into and vented at each end of the tunnel. Total cost of construction was approximately $25 million US dollars. The river section of the tunnel was connected to bored tunnels on both banks. The tubes were then covered over in the trench by 4 to 20 feet (1.2 to 6.1 m) of mud. Because the tunnel essentially sits on the river bottom, there is a wide no-anchor zone enforced on river traffic. The tunnel is 120 feet (37 m) short of a mile at 5,160 feet (1,573 m). At its lowest point, the two-lane roadway is 75 feet (23 m) below the river surface. The Detroit–Windsor Tunnel was completed in 1930. It was the third underwater vehicular tunnel constructed in the United States, following the Holland Tunnel, between Jersey City, New Jersey and downtown Manhattan, New York, and the Posey Tube, between Oakland and Alameda, California. Its creation followed the opening of cross-border rail freight tunnels including the St. Clair Tunnel between Port Huron, Michigan and Sarnia, Ontario in 1891 and the Michigan Central Railway Tunnel between Detroit and Windsor in 1910. The cities of Detroit and Windsor hold the distinction of jointly creating both the second and third underground tunnels between two nations in the world. The Detroit–Windsor Tunnel is the world’s third underground tunnel between two nations, and the first international underground vehicle tunnel. The Michigan Central Railway Tunnel, also under the Detroit River, was the second tunnel between two nations. The St. Clair Tunnel, between Port Huron, Michigan and Sarnia, Ontario under the St. Clair River, was the first. In 2007, billionaire Manuel Moroun, owner of the nearby Ambassador Bridge, attempted to purchase the American side of the tunnel. In 2008, the City of Windsor controversially attempted to purchase the American side for $75 million, but the deal fell through after a scandal involving then-Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. Soon afterward, the city's finances were badly hit in a recession and the tunnel's future was in question. Following Detroit's July 2013 bankruptcy filing, Windsor Mayor Eddie Francis said that his city would consider purchasing Detroit's half of the tunnel if it was offered for sale. On July 25, 2013, the lessor, manager and operator of the tunnel, Detroit Windsor Tunnel LLC, and its parent company, American Roads, LLC, voluntarily filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. The American lease was eventually purchased by Syncora Guarantee, a Bermuda based insurance company.[6] Soon afterward, the lease with Detroit was extended 2040.Both Syncora and Windsor retained the Windsor-Detroit Tunnel Corporation to manage the daily operations and upkeep of the tunnel. The tunnel is the second busiest crossing between the United States and Canada after the nearby Ambassador Bridge. A 2004 Border Transportation Partnership study showed that 150,000 jobs in the region and $13 billion (U.S.) in annual production depend on the Windsor-Detroit international border crossing. Between 2001 and 2005, profits from the tunnel peaked, with the cities receiving over $6 million annually. A steep decline in traffic eliminated profits from the tunnel from 2008 until 2012, with a modest recovery in the years since.