Overview | |
---|---|
Location | Detroit River between Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario |
Route | Connecting Jefferson Avenue (near I-375 and M-10) and Goyeau Street |
Operation | |
Opened | 1930 |
Owner | Cities of Detroit and Windsor |
Operator | Detroit-Windsor Tunnel Company, LLC |
Traffic | 13,000 vehicles |
Toll | USD 4.75/CAD 4.75 (autos travelling into Canada) |
Technical | |
Length | 1,570 metres (5,150 ft) |
No. of lanes | 2 |
Tunnel clearance | 4 metres (13 ft) |
Width | 6.7 metres (22 ft) |
USD 4.50/CAD 4.50 (autos travelling into US)
The Detroit–Windsor Tunnel (French: Tunnel Detroit-Windsor) is a highway tunnel connecting Detroit, Michigan, in the United States, with Windsor, Ontario, in Canada. It is the second busiest crossing between the United States and Canada.
The Detroit–Windsor Tunnel was built by the firm Parsons, Klapp, Brinckerhoff and Douglas (the same firm that built the Holland Tunnel). The executive engineer was Burnside A. Value, the engineer of design was Norwegian-American engineer Søren Anton Thoresen, while fellow Norwegian-American Ole Singstad consulted, and designed the ventilation.
The method used to construct the tunnel was immersed tube (sections of steel tube floated into place and sunk into a trench dug in the river bottom), as was done in the earlier Posey Tube. The tunnel sections have three main levels. The bottom level brings in fresh air under pressure, which is forced into the mid level, where the traffic lanes are located, and the third level is where the engine exhaust is forced into and vented at each end of the tunnel. Total cost of construction was approximately $25 million US dollars (around $358 million in 2016 dollars).
The river section of the tunnel was connected to bored tunnels on both banks. The tubes were then covered over in the trench by 4 to 20 feet (1.2 to 6.1 m) of mud. Because the tunnel essentially sits on the river bottom, there is a wide no-anchor zone enforced on river traffic.
The tunnel is 120 feet (37 m) short of a mile at 5,160 feet (1,573 m). At its lowest point, the two-lane roadway is 75 feet (23 m) below the river surface.
The Detroit–Windsor Tunnel was completed in 1930. It was the third underwater vehicular tunnel constructed in the United States, following the Holland Tunnel, between Jersey City, New Jersey, and downtown Manhattan, New York, and the Posey Tube, between Oakland and Alameda, California.