Bridge's Private Ownership Raises Concerns
Source: By MONICA DAVEY, New York Times, October 12, 2007
...... But the span, the Ambassador Bridge, is owned not by either country, not by the cities of Detroit or Windsor, Detroit's Canadian neighbor, and not by some public bridge authority. It is owned by one man and his privately held company. In a remarkable arrangement for a crossing so major, Manuel J. Moroun, a reclusive billionaire from Detroit's suburbs who oversees a trucking empire, owns the bridge, one of only two privately owned bridges along the United States' entire northern border and by far the most economically significant privately owned bridge in the nation. ........ In a confluence of concerns over national border security, safety of the nation's stock of bridges and an economic crisis in Michigan, the unusual arrangement here has prompted a simple question: Who should own a bridge?.