Gordie Howe bridge vehicle traffic tops 340,000 in first full month of operation
The Gordie Howe International Bridge connects Windsor, Ont., and Detroit, adding a publicly-owned competition to the privately-owned Ambassador Bridge. (Patrick Morrell/CBC)Social SharingTraffic at the new Gordie Howe International Bridge connecting Windsor, Ont., and Detroit topped 340,000 in its first full month of operation, according to new data.
There were 343,507 crossings at the bridge in August, the first full month it was open, per fresh figures from the Bridge and Tunnel Operators Association.
It was nearly the same as traffic at the nearby Ambassador Bridge, which saw 345,445 crossings last month.
But the composition of the traffic on the competing spans was different. The majority of crossings at the Gordie Howe bridge were passenger vehicles: Nearly 270,000 vs. roughly 74,000 trucks.
At the Ambassador, truck traffic was around 150,000, compared to 196,000 passenger cars.
New bridge, same traffic: Why is the road to the Ambassador Bridge still packed with trucks?
Jason Miller, a supply chain management professor at Michigan State University, says he believes many trucking companies have toll price contracts with the Ambassador Bridge.
"So what's happening is they are probably locked in for this year," he told Windsor Morning on Wednesday. "So it does not make as much sense for them to shift trucks over to Gordie Howe until they would have some type of renegotiated contract or they themselves have a contractual price with Gordie Howe."
The Windsor-Detroit Tunnel still had the highest volume of passenger vehicles, with approximately 280,000 crossings in August.
Recently released numbers from Statistics Canada offer a more detailed look at the origin of the people crossing the various ports of entry in the Windsor-Detroit corridor.
"In August, the Gordie Howe International Bridge was used for 134,900 Canadian-resident return trips from the United States by automobile, 56.7 per cent of which were same-day," the federal agency said Friday. "It was also used as a port of entry for 101,000 US-resident trips to Canada by automobile, 52.2 per cent of which were same-day.
Statistics Canada graph showing August 2026 crossing data for ports of entry in the Windsor-Detroit corridor. (Statistics Canada)"During the same period, 348,000 Canadian and US residents entered Canada by automobile at Windsor's Ambassador Bridge and the Windsor-Detroit Tunnel, down 35.4 per cent from August 2025."
The agency also said that 34,800 commercial transport trucks entered Canada using the Gordie Howe Bridge last month.
"Commercial transport truck entries at Windsor's other ports increased by 0.4 per cent from the same period one year earlier to total 87,400," it added.
The Ambassador Bridge, seen here on July 28, 2026, the day after the opening of the Gordie Howe International Bridge opened, ending nearly a century of private monopoly over bridge traffic between Windsor, Ont., and Detroit. (Patrick Morrell/CBC)Miller said traffic volumes at the three crossings are likely to shift in the months ahead as the "novelty effect" of taking the brand new Gordie Howe bridge wears off.
In any case, he said the traffic volumes at the new span being nearly as high as those at the Ambassador Bridge show "the need for that second crossing."
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"What I'm really curious to see is if there's any information [to] come out about the wait times at either bridge, because that that to me is the most important thing beyond just the crossings, is just that smoother flow of commerce," he added.
Emma Loop is a video journalist at CBC Windsor. She previously spent eight years covering politics, national security, and business in Washington, D.C. Before that, she covered Canadian politics in Ottawa. She has worked at the Windsor Star, Ottawa Citizen, Axios, and BuzzFeed News, where she was a member of the FinCEN Files team that was named a finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting. She was born and raised in Essex County, Ont. You can reach her at emma.loop@cbc.ca.
