Gordie Howe International Bridge nears opening, easing Detroit-Windsor trade flow

A new six-lane bridge over the Detroit River is set to reshape how autos, farm goods and factory parts move between Detroit and Windsor, adding a second major crossing where one bridge has long carried most of the trade load. The Gordie Howe International Bridge is expected to open to traffic by June 21, with vehicles possibly rolling as early as June 15.

The crossing is designed to do more than add lanes. It is intended to provide redundancy, added traffic capacity, expanded border processing and direct highway-to-highway connectivity between Highway 401 and Interstate 75, linking the manufacturing heartlands of Ontario and Michigan more efficiently. The span should also ease pressure on the privately owned Ambassador Bridge, the busiest international border crossing in North America by trade volume. Officials say the new route will cut about 20 minutes from truck crossings, and a University of Windsor study estimated those time savings could add up to $2.3 billion for truckers over 30 years.

The project has been years in the making. Construction began in 2018, after Canada agreed to finance the bridge when the United States declined to pay its share, with costs to be recovered through tolls over three decades. The bridge itself is a 2.5-kilometre cable-stayed span with an 853-metre main span, the longest main span of any cable-stayed bridge in North America. The larger project also includes a 130-acre Canadian Port of Entry and a 148-acre U.S. Port of Entry.

The opening comes after the project was pulled into Donald Trump’s second-term tariff politics. In February, Trump threatened to block the bridge’s opening, tying it to disputes over Canadian alcohol sales, dairy tariffs and Ottawa’s trade talks with China. Even so, the operational work kept moving. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told a Senate hearing last week that the department was “good to go” on staffing the bridge, while U.S. Customs and Border Protection had already established the Gordie Howe crossing as a Class A port of entry for immigration purposes, effective March 2, 2026, and part of the Port of Detroit for customs purposes.

Canada’s border agency has said it is preparing a new port of entry at the site, following extensive work through 2024 and 2025. The Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority, created in 2012, is delivering the project through a 36-year public-private partnership with Bridging North America that covers design, construction, financing, operations and maintenance. With the opening window now close, the bridge is becoming a tangible measure of North American economic integration after years of delay, including a recent push from fall 2025 into early 2026.