Ambassador Bridge

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**Ambassador Bridge**
Ambassador Bridge from the American side of the Detroit River
Official name	Ambassador Bridge
Carries	4 lanes connecting I-96 and Highway 3
Crosses	Detroit River
Locale	Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario
Maintained by	Detroit International Bridge Company and Canadian Transit Company
Design	Suspension bridge
Longest span	563.88 meters (1,850 feet)
Total length	2,286 meters (7,500 feet)
Clearance below	46.33 meters (152 feet)
AADT	10,000+ trucks per day, 4000+ autos per day
Opening date	November 11, 1929
Maps and aerial photos Street map from Google Maps or Yahoo! Maps Topographic map from TopoZone Aerial image or topographic map from TerraServer-USA Satellite image from Google Maps or Microsoft Virtual Earth

Ambassador Bridge, looking southwest towards the Downriver communities.

Ambassador Bridge from the Canadian side of the Detroit River

The Ambassador Bridge is a privately owned suspension bridge that connects Detroit, Michigan, in the United States, with Windsor, Ontario, in Canada. The Detroit-Windsor Tunnel also connects these two cities.

The bridge, over the Detroit River, had the largest central span in the world when it was completed in 1929 — 1,850 foot (564 m). The total bridge length is 7,500 feet (2,286 m). The roadway rises 152 feet (46 m) above the Detroit River. It is the busiest international border crossing in North America in terms of trade volume: more than 25% of all merchandise trade between the United States and Canada crosses the bridge. The bridge construction started in 1927, and was completed in 1929. The architect was McClintic-Marshall Company of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The bridge is styled in an interesting mixture of Art Deco and Art moderne architectural designs, with some Gothic architecture blended in. It is made primarily out of steel, however, the two main towers on each side of the river are made of a steel-silicon alloy which rise up from concrete piers.

The bridge towers rise from concrete piers. The twin towers rise 386 feet above the river, and plunge 115 feet below the surface of the Detroit River. The bridge is made up of 21,000 tons of steel, and the roadway rises as high as 152 feet above the Detroit River.

It is a four-lane bridge and carries more than 10,000 commercial vehicles on a typical weekday. Jointly owned by the Detroit International Bridge Company and the Canadian Transit Company the bridge will have direct access to and from Interstate 75 and Interstate 96 on the U.S. side and Highway 3 on Canadian side when a major redesign of its U.S. Plaza is completed in 2008.

Due to the extremely high traffic volume, the American and Canadian governments are jointly examining proposals for the construction of a second bridge Downriver. Additionally, much of the passenger car traffic has shifted to using the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel because of back-ups that extend onto Interstate 75 in Detroit, and down Huron Church Road (Ontario Highway 3) in Windsor, Ontario.

In times of particular security crackdowns, or from terrorist attacks (foiled or otherwise), the line-ups for trucks can easily be 8 miles (15 km) in length, and shortly after the September 11th Attacks, the trucks were backed up for over 34 kilometres, to just past the Belle River Road interchange on Highway 401.

Some of the concrete from the original roadbed of the Ambassador Bridge has been used in Windsor's parks and bike trails.

[edit] In Literature, Film and Television shows

It was featured in the Eminem movie 8 Mile, Crossing the Bridge (starring Stephen Baldwin) and Grosse Pointe Blank (starring John Cusack). It can also be seen in the opening scenes of Four Brothers. The bridge was also a scene in the Biker Mice From Mars episode "The Motor City Maniac" (1994). Also featured in Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine. A 2006 play by Canadian playwright David Brock titled Ambassador Bridge examined the divide between Canada and the United States.