University of Windsor

On the last day of our trip, we met Prof. Bill Anderson and his colleagues and students at University of Windsor. Professor Anderson is affiliated with Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Department of Political Science, and his research examines border crossing issues not only from transportation aspect, but also from economic and political aspects.

We started our meeting with Prof. Goodchild giving a presentation on Pacific Highway Border Crossing Commercial Vehicle Operations. Then each attendee introduced their research focuses. Professors and students from University of Windsor have a variety of research interests in border facilities, loop detector operations, roundabout design, and the impact of truck traffics on congestions, and so on. Later Prof. Anderson presented his research on the Border and Ontario Economy. He introduced that Ontario has an export-oriented economy, with most export goods transported by trucks and highly dependent on critical infrastructure. He also discussed the border crossing costs, supply chain risk in Auto industry resulted from uncertain border crossing time, and strategies utilized to mitigate such uncertainty. He also gave another presentation on infrastructure issues with border crossing: A second Windsor-Detroit Bridge? He talked about the public-private partnership model for building a second Windsor-Detroit Bridge and the funding issues from US government.

Detained by the Toronto Police

Unplanned stop on the tour: Your blogging correspondent had the privilege of being briefly detained by the Toronto Police for suspicious photographic activity at the security perimeter of the G20 meeting area.

As an engineer and awed by the logistical and construction challenges of such a massive temporary security infrastructure, yours truly was wandering around the city, curiously and innocently documenting the dichotomous landscape, taking pictures of beautiful Toronto landmarks with so much concrete and steel in the foreground.

According to the detaining officer, the "eye in the sky" had spotted suspicious activity and, after being followed for an undetermined amount of time and detained in a hotel lobby restroom, the suspect was searched, questioned, identified, verified, and enjoyed a suspect-officer picture sharing session of all content on the digital camera in question. The suspect's story was then verified with the other members of the traveling party after which it was decided that, yes, tourists tend to take pictures of interesting things. And, as the officer stated that the police were operating under the War Measures Act with due process temporarily suspended, more photographic prudence would be wise.

But to be fair, the officers involved were quite friendly and our dinner was only delayed by about fifteen minutes. And dinner was delicious -- freedom never tasted so good.

The Border: By Bridge and Tunnel

A study trip of border operations could not be complete without experiencing the different ways by which thousands of people cross the border every day. To begin our trip, we all piled into a rental car at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport, headed northeast and crossed the Blue Water Bridge from Port Huron, Michigan across the St. Clair River to Sarnia, Ontario.

It was a beautiful day with expansive views from the bridge (which we were not able to take in so well since traffic was at free flow), experienced virtually no wait at the border, and entered Canada without any delay or complication. From an operational standpoint, it was the perfect border crossing experience.

On our return trip several days later, and with our newfound skepticism for the structural and political integrity of the Ambassador Bridge, we chose to cross the border using the two-lane Detroit-Windsor Tunnel. The process was simple and painless: We paid a cash toll before entering the tunnel, were not impeded by any traffic and, when we emerged on U.S. soil, proceeded directly to the booth where we had another timely and simple border crossing.

If every border crossing experience were as simple and painless as this, we would be out of work!