By Doug Draper
We have been treated to so many false starts on this one over the past decades or so, we almost post this news with our tongues firmly planted in our cheeks.
A virtual depiction of what the new cross-border span would look like near the existing Peace Bridge. Image courtesy of Peace Bridge Authority
But let’s hope that a report, published in The Buffalo News this September 30, that construction could begin on a new bridge next to the Peace Bridge in the summer of 2012 turns out to be true because for the sake of the economies on both sides of our border, we need that new crossing badly.
According to the story in the News, the Buffalo and Fort Erie Peace Bridge Authority has made a final decision on one of a number of designs for the new bridge unveiled over the past year and wants to get the building underway because up to $100 million in Canadian federal funding is at stake – funding that could disappear if there isn’t a shovel in the ground by 2012 and the project isn’t completed by 2014.
The design that bridge officials have chosen, following their own review and feedback they have received from area politicians and members of the public at open houses held over the past year on both sides of the Canada/U.S. border, is a three-arch span shown as it would look near the 1920s-vintage Peace Bridge, in an image posted here. As the Buffalo News story goes on to say, there will no doubt be some ‘hand wringing’ on both sides of the border over the potential environmental impacts or over any new to move forward with building a new bridge at all. But as much as many of us may hope there will be more of a shift to trains and buses for moving people and goods around, cars and trucks are not going away – and the traffic jams at this vital border crossing have just gotten worse over the years.
It is a wonder that the three-lane Peace Bridge, opened 83 years ago at a cost of $4.5 million, continues to serve us as well as it does, despite the recurrent jams of traffic lining up at customs. Just as another reminder of how much construction costs have inflated over the past eight or nine decades, estimates on the cost of building the new companion bridge range around $600 million.
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Niagara At Large 
The Fort Erie Taxpayers have been stung twice in suppying new water and sewer lines to the Peace Bridge ,they the Peace Bridge can pay for any additional water and sewer lines themselves, The residents are tired of paying the tab for these bums.George
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I do travel across the bridge and am amazed at the revenue these bridges must accumulate…and then I wonder where the hell does all this money go as it must be billions of dollars?? I remember instances during Harper’s reign of terror when the Harper Government attempted to enforce the Border people to wearing name tags and other crack pot ideas…Yes Doug I have watched Bridge traffic build up on the Canadian Side and booths close but then again I have also wondered where the hell all the people are as the traffic backs up back over the Bridge and several booths are without border Guards manning them.
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