It was recently reported that the construction company ACS will be in charge of building the Gordie Howe International Bridge: a cable-stayed bridge that will have the distinction of being the longest in all of North America. If you’d like to learn a little more about the details of this mega-project, don’t miss this post.
FEATURES AND LOCATION OF THE INFRASTRUCTURE
The Gordie Howe Tunnel will be a binational tunnel, as part of its structure will be located on the territory American and another part on territory Canadian. Specifically, it will connect the cities of Windsor and Detroit, across the river of the same name as the latter.
The infrastructure will have a total length of 2.5 kilometers and with a main span of 853 meters (the longest of all cable-stayed bridges in North America) and with no piers in the water. It will be “A”-shaped and will have a total of 6 lanes for vehicular traffic, 3 of them in each direction of traffic, to which will also be added a pedestrian path.
The The border between Windsor and Detroit is one of the busiest and busiest in North America, as it is an area of vital importance for commercial, economic, and industrial trade between the U.S. and Canada. The construction of the Gordie Howe Bridge aims to channel the current traffic of 18,500 vehicles per day, a figure that is expected to rise to 26,500 vehicles in 2025.
The bridge will be connected to an extension of the Rt. Hon. Ron Herb Gray Parkway, whose construction is also ACS participant, on its eastern side.
THE AWARD CONTRACT
The project will involve a investment exceeding 2.6 billion euros. The contract was awarded to the subsidiaries Iridium and Dragados through a bidding process conducted by the Government of Canada.
In addition to the design, construction, financing, operation, and maintenance of the bridge itself, the contract includes the construction and maintenance of border facilities in Canada and the United States; these facilities include 53 hectares in the first country and 68 in the second. The project also includes the construction of buildings for infrastructure user control, as well as renovation work on the I-75, which serves as a link between Detroit and the Gordie Howe Bridge.
The scheduled date The signing of the concession contract and the financial close for the project will take place before October of this year and will be carried out through the system of public-private partnership.
ACS'S CONSOLIDATION IN THE NORTH AMERICAN MARKET
This contract win underscores ACS's growing presence in the North American infrastructure market. It is worth noting that the company already has numerous recent large-scale projects in the region in its portfolio, such as the new Los Angeles Airport's automated rail transit system ($4.9 billion), the REM rail system in Montreal ($4.8 billion), the power plant and spillways of the SITE C hydroelectric power plant in British Columbia ($1.2 billion) or the company itself Rt. Hon. Ron Herb Gray Parkway -as mentioned above- ($990 million). All of this, in addition to the 27,815 million dollars in projects that ACS was already working on in North America at the end of last year.
