As phase II of the Queenston plaza redesign nears completion, traveling between the US and Canada is set to become a whole lot easier. Gay Sutton talks to Lew Holloway, general manager of the Niagara Falls Bridge Commission, about the challenges of doing construction work at an active border crossing.
Travelers wishing to cross the US-Canadian border via the most direct route between Toronto, Ontario, and the state of New York have four options. Either they cross the Niagara River—the natural boundary between Canada and the US—via one of the three bridges managed by the Niagara Falls Bridge Commission, or they travel some 16 miles further south to cross between Buffalo and Fort Erie. Since 9/11, however, increased security at the border crossings has caused significant delays.
“Prior to 9/11, the average primary processing time for a car at the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge was around 30 seconds,” explained Lew Holloway, general manager of the Niagara Falls Bridge Commission. “During this time the officer had to determine the nationality of the occupants of the vehicle and whether they had anything to declare, and generally did this verbally. Now, the average processing time is over a minute, and the officer is required to scan documents and verify the identity of the occupants.”
A minute may sound insignificant, but that represents a doubling of processing time and this has caused considerable congestion on both sides of the border. “Long delays at Queenston on the Canadian side of the border resulted in several fatalities caused by passenger vehicles driving into the back of stopped transport trucks,” Holloway said. This was remedied by expansion of Highway 405 and the construction of a separate lane for transport trucks funded jointly by Canada, Ontario and the Niagara Falls Bridge Commission. The Commission has also undertaken work to upgrade the bridge to today’s standards.
To address all these issues the Commission developed a plan to improve and upgrade the bridge, the plazas on both sides of the river, and the connecting road networks. Now with work on the Canadian side to be completed shortly, there will be some relief for long suffering travelers transiting between the two countries. “Our biggest challenge on a go-forward basis is that we will have a state-of-the-art facility on the Canadian side and a 1960s facility on the US side,” Holloway said. But until the funding can be found for the upgrades on the US side, CBP (US Customs and Border Protection) and the Commission will have to do the best they can with outdated facilities.
Established in 1938, the Commission is a bi-national not-for-profit corporation that manages all three bridges in the region of Niagara Falls. The Lewiston-Queenston Bridge is the designated commercial traffic bridge and carries passenger vehicles, coaches, recreational vehicles and transport trucks. Last year alone, some 675,000 commercial transport trucks crossed the bridge. Just north of the falls the Rainbow Bridge carries passenger vehicles, coaches and recreational vehicles only, the majority of them being tourists. Meanwhile, the Whirlpool Rapids Bridge, just a little further north, is the only bridge in Canada and the US to be exclusively for Nexus card holders. Run as a joint venture between the US and Canada, Nexus is a customs and immigration program for frequent travelers that expedites the transition of trusted travelers through border control.
The program of work on the Queenston plaza has been divided into in three phases. But before work began on the plaza the Commission, in conjunction with the Province of Ontario and the Canadian Government, invested some $44.9 million to reconfigure and upgrade provincial highway 405 leading to the bridge. This addressed the accident hazard by separating the trucks and cars into different lanes. The bridge was also strengthened and upgraded to meet today’s seismic requirements. The old deck which provided two lanes in each direction separated by a median was replaced with a five lane flexible direction highway that could be configured to any combination of flow patterns as required.
“One of our biggest challenges with this project was having sufficient land to accommodate the expanded facilities,” Holloway said. “The new Customs Border Services Agency (CBSA) building and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) building which are part of phase II, will be three times the size of the existing buildings.
“So in phase I space was created by building a two storey parking garage to replace the previous parking which had been on-site. The old toll lanes and maintenance garage were demolished and six new toll lanes, a new toll house and a maintenance garage were constructed. Following a new route, five new commercial inspection lanes for trucks were also constructed to separate commercial traffic from passenger vehicle traffic.” Costing a total of $49 million, this phase was completed early in 2009.
The second and largest phase of construction includes the impressive 110,000 sq ft CBSA building housing state-of-the-art car, truck and bus processing facilities, a 6,100 sq ft CFIA building and 10 new primary inspection lanes for cars. Construction began in spring 2009 but has not been without its challenges. One of the biggest headaches for the construction team has been maintaining the through flow of traffic on this busy border crossing, while managing public safety on what is essentially a construction site. To manage this effectively, the Commission engaged a traffic engineering firm to work with Project Management to route the traffic according to the phases of construction.
The work on phase II is almost at an end now. “We’re expecting that the new Customs and Food Inspection Agency buildings will be fully operational by late January. Once that has happened we can start tearing down the old buildings and routing the traffic through the site as required while that is in progress. It’s going to be interesting.”
That leaves just the final phase of the project which will begin next year. Estimated at $7.5 million, it will include a new duty free shop, currency exchange and public washrooms.
A strong element throughout this project has been its design, firstly to minimize the environmental impact through the use of environmentally friendly materials and practices such as triple paned glass and green roofs, and secondly to ensure that the plaza sat comfortably with its surroundings. Over $1 million, for example, has gone into landscaping to minimize the visual impact of acres of concrete.
“When the architects were designing the CBSA building, they became familiar with and took photos of the surrounding farmland, the greenhouses, vineyards, Niagara Gorge and the bridges. They then completed their design with the surroundings in mind.” And their success has been recognized. The town of Niagara-On-The-Lake was so impressed by the first phase that it awarded it a certificate for contemporary design.
Once the project is completed it will not only fulfill its function of easing congestion and cutting the accident rate, it will also be an attractive public space. “The new plaza will be the first thing travelers see after crossing the bridge. It makes a huge statement, and will be a very compelling entrance into Canada,” Holloway concluded.
