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Artvoice Weekly Edition » Issue v7n3 (01/17/2008) » Peace Bridge Chronicles #91

Ron Rienas: "It's Not About Trucks"

Every day there are emails about the Peace Bridge—some days three or four of them—from the Columbus Avenue homeowners group. The list of recipients is organic, growing larger week by week. One mailing for January 12 had 73 recipients. It included every local politician of note, local staffers for the area’s senators and members of Congress, the Buffalo News, Artvoice, WBFO, Don Esmonde, two Sam Hoyt staffers, Mylous Hairston and one member of the PBA.

Some of the emails are organizational (let’s have a meeting, let’s picket the governor when he visits Buffalo, let’s organize a letter- and opinion-writing campaign to the Buffalo News), some of them vent anger about the neighborhood homes that will be taken for the new Peace Bridge Plaza, and some vent frustration because Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown ignores their pleas for help and seems interested only in having his picture taken at the inevitable groundbreaking ceremony. When the letter-writing campaign began, it focused primarily on the expansion project; many of the letters now object to having any kind of bridge in the neighborhood at all. The frustration level is so high that the letter writers have lately been attacking not only Mayor Brown, who might help them but seems to have no interest in doing so, but also Assemblyman Sam Hoyt, who, more than any other elected official, has consistently taken their concerns seriously and, so far as I can tell, done what he could to address them.

The letters point out that bridge officials are giving different reasons for the expansion now than they were 15 years ago, which is true. Fifteen years ago, they were expecting increased traffic at the Peace Bridge. That hasn’t happened, in part because of 9/11 which, save for bubbles such as the Canadian shoppers now going back and forth because of the weak dollar, has resulted in a decrease in passenger traffic.

Cynics say that PBA officials are giving different reasons now because the old reasons don’t hold up and they’ll use any excuse to expand the bridge. Bridge officials say they deal with present realities and likely futures and they can’t be faulted if economic and political situations change. They had one set of reasons for expanding the bridge a decade ago, another set now. The issue, from their point of view, isn’t consistency but rather dealing with political and economic exigencies.

The Peace Bridge is run by the Buffalo and Fort Erie Public Bridge Authority, which comprises 10 politically appointed board members, five of them Canadian, five American. The chairmanship alternates every year. Boards like that are vague and amorphous, so the neighborhood’s anger has often targeted Ron Rienas, the general manager of he Peace Bridge. The ad hominem attacks are unjustified, but focusing on him as a representative of the PBA is: He is the board’s public face, he knows more about the project than anyone else and he is accessible.

So we asked Rienas how some of these issues looked from his point of view. What follows is a transcript of our conversation. We began with “shared border management,” a failed plan to shift all US government operations at the Bridge site to the Canadian side, thereby significantly reducing the footprint of the US plaza.

Shared Border Management

Bruce Jackson: Who killed shared border management? What happened?

Ron Rienas: Shared border management really died because there was an impasse reached between the government of Canada and the government of the United States. Secretary Chertoff, in April, basically said that there was an impasse between Canada and the US, primarily because the US was unable to perform all of the functions in Canada that they were able to at all other border crossings: search and seizure, arrest, fingerprinting.

Fingerprinting has been held up as the issue that made the biggest difference. In accordance to the Canadian Charter of Rights and the Constitution of Canada, people cannot just be arbitrarily fingerprinted. There has to be probable cause. So there’s a big difference between what can currently be done on Canadian soil and what Customs and Border Protection wanted to do in Canada. In essence, what that amounted to was the inability of Customs and Border Protection to function in Canada the way they do everywhere else. That was unacceptable to the Department of Homeland Security, and there were also issues related to just not wanting to defend any actions in a Canadian court.

I’m not blaming anyone, but the loss of shared border management was a huge disappointment to us. We had the ability to do it, and it made sense both environmentally and from a property perspective, and from a traffic-flow perspective. Having said that, we don’t see it ever really being reactivated.

BJ: So you don’t care who gets elected next year, it’s not going to make any difference.

RR: I don’t believe so, and the discussions we’ve had with the Department of State and the Department of Homeland Security have resulted in the conclusion that the likelihood of Homeland Security doing something different here than anywhere else, or reducing what they do across the whole northern border with Canada—it’s simply not going to happen.

BJ: I remember years ago flying to Montreal and going through US Customs and INS in Montreal. Why couldn’t an operation like that happen here?

RR: We actually suggested that to them very early on. It’s called the airport model, and it’s still being done in a number of Canadian Airports—Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal—and we said, “Why can’t we just do the airport model at a land border crossing?”

The response we got was that the situation is dramatically different. The activity at the airport with US and Customs happens after you go through security, so there’s no contraband, theoretically speaking. At least not of the bomb-making type. At the airport, if that person was to be considered safe, and in terms of the airport, if there were problems with that person, they could be dealt with when they landed. You could get off, someone could be awaiting you, you could be arrested. They said it is so different with respect to vehicle searches, as opposed to just people. Commercial is a whole different ball of wax.

And we tried the embassy model, which is to say that a certain place is sovereign territory, and they said that embassies are done with a very specific legislation. There’s no arrest and seizure taking place in an embassy, and here they want to have those powers.

We said, what about the Chunnel, because on the Chunnel you actually have border pre-clearance. And they said, “That’s Europe, and it’s different than North America.”

So, for every single issue, model, or what we considered to be a solution to making this work, we asked why it couldn’t be done. We also considered a land-swap, which is changing the border so that it isn’t running exactly down the Niagara River, having the land around the Peace Bridge deeded to the United States, and at another similar border, having the land in the US deeded to Canada, and they said it was too complicated and that it wouldn’t go politically to give up territory.

Every one of those options, apparently, was viewed at length by a legion of lawyers, and they said that for this, that and the other reason, it was not able to work.

So the likelihood of it happening with a new administration…even though it was announced with great fanfare in 2004, and they actually said that they would do it, as opposed to study it. They said the Peace Bridge would be a pilot, and that all of these issues would be worked out in a matter of months, it turns out that none of the things would have been worked out. That was just the starting point, and when they started, that’s when all of these issues kept cropping up. Ultimately, it just became political.

There was the issue of Arar,* the Canadian citizen who was sent over to the Middle East, and that became a political issue again, with people saying “Well, what would have been the consequences if that would have happened at Fort Erie?” Whether that was a make-or-break issue, I don’t know, because we were not a party to those discussions, but we were hearing that there were all these types of issues that made it very difficult to have that happen.

Clearly, the United States has legitimate security concerns that they want to make sure are properly addressed, but on the other hand, the Canadian government feels strongly that the Charter of Rights is there to protect Canadians, and that if you’re going to be on Canadian soil, all the Charter rights apply to you. So there was a difference that they were not able to bridge.

Another thing to recognize is that people say, “Oh, what’s another year? You know you’re going to have a new president in the White House by the end of 2008.” And the fact of the matter is that, if it were only a year, and we were guaranteed that it would happen in a year, I would be the first person to say, “Let’s wait.” But that’s not what the case would be. You would be starting over, basically, in December of 2008. I use a football analogy: If we were at the one-yard line, ready to score the touchdown, and this was a timeout, I would say, “Let’s do it.” But if we’re on the 20-yard line with 80 yards to go…the likelihood if it happening could take five years, 10 years.

THE E.U. MODEL

RR: Ideally, we would have the European Union model, which is that of perimeter security, where there is a perimeter around us of security between Canada and the US because then you wouldn’t need plazas. You wouldn’t have to do all of the things we’re talking about doing. It would be a free-flowing border with everyone going across and everything going the way it should be going. I was in Europe in the fall, going back and forth between three countries, and there’s just a signpost on the side that says, “Welcome to Austria.” That’s it. I am a firm believer that that’s been a big win for Europe, economically speaking. You don’t have these artificial barriers between goods and people crossing the border—”

BJ: And socially—

RR: Exactly. We were in Salzburg, for example, which is near the border of Germany, and while we were there it was the German unification holiday. And Salzburg was packed with people, because they didn’t have to worry about a border. I talked to a few people who said there’s been a huge spike in tourism because of not having those boundaries.

Imagine Buffalo if we didn’t have the border. The population of Southern Ontario and Greater Toronto is going to go both ways, but particularly I am talking about the economic viability of Buffalo, if we didn’t have to worry about that. A team like the Buffalo Bills would be considered a regional team because the border doesn’t exist, and people would just go without having to worry. Those types of issues are always on everyone’s mind.

Ideally there would be no border. Maybe that’s very wishful thinking on my part.

JUSTIFYING THE PROJECT

BJ: Why is this expansion is necessary? Some people say that when you build more roads, you just get more traffic.

RR: There probably is a little bit of that induced demand.

We reconfigured the US plaza and added three commercial booths. There was a 75 percent increase in traffic capacity, but we didn’t have a 75 percent increase in traffic. Not even close. We had a one percent increase, which means that all of a sudden people aren’t flocking to the Peace Bridge.

What we’re doing is responding to the conditions being imposed upon us by the agencies on both sides of the border. As processing has changed, particularly post-9/11, it’s taking longer and there are different criteria and different parameters to get across the border. The only thing to compensate for that is the increased infrastructure that you have. It doesn’t necessarily mean that more people are going to cross; it just means that we hope to eliminate a lot of the congestion that we are experiencing in the bridge right now.

When I came across today, the trucks were lined all the way across the bridge. We went from four lanes to seven lanes, and if we hadn’t done that, the traffic would have been two miles up the highway. We’re doing this simply to respond to the feedback we’re getting from the border agencies. They have a job to do, and we need to respond to that.

A lot of people say that it is solely related to traffic volumes. It really isn’t. Since 9/11, there has been a decrease in traffic, but an increase in congestion.

BJ: I know there’s been a decrease in passenger traffic, but has there also been a decrease in truck traffic?

RR: Sometimes there’s a one percent increase, sometimes there’s been a one percent decrease, but it has basically been relatively flat. But there has still been an increase in congestion, and the reason for that is that in 2002 the US legislated Trade Act came into being. That changed the way the border worked, particularly for border traffic.

Pre-Trade Act, a trucker could arrive at the border unprepared. What that meant is, he could have a load of stuff, and all Customs would do is refer him to the secondary yard, where his truck would sit for a few hours. He would go in and see his broker, and when all the paperwork was worked out with Customs, he’d go. That’s what created the problems at the border, to a large extent, and that’s why we did the Commercial Vehicle Processing Center in 1998—we did that so we could do the paperwork for the truckers before they could reach the primary inspection booth.

But it wasn’t mandatory. The Trade Act of 2002 made it mandatory. Today, every truck that arrives at the border must have its paperwork in order. Not only must they have their paperwork in order, they must have notified Customs an hour in advance. For fast shipments it’s an hour, and for FDA shipments it’s two hours, and if that’s not in order, depending on the discretion of the officer, they may get referred to secondary, or if it’s clear he hasn’t done anything, he could get sent back to Canada.

But now they’re doing more in the primary booth, so it takes longer. Before the Trade Act, if you got through primary quickly, you could get sent over to secondary for a couple of hours. There were instances where secondary was packed, and we parked trucks all the way down to Porter Avenue. A lot of times we parked them all the way down the ramp to the Thruway, and it had nothing to do with security. It was simple paperwork.

If there is such a thing as a good thing that came out of 9/11, it was the Trade Act of 2002, because it changed the whole way the border operated. The negative to that is that now primary inspection takes longer, because hopefully everything’s in order, but if it’s not they’re going to get sent over to secondary.

Which takes me back to your previous question: Why are we doing this project? Because we need more primary booths. The secondary lot that is in this plan only has 44 truck parking spaces. There were times in previous years where there were more truck parking spaces. That’s why I take exception to people who say that we’re building a truck stop. We’re not. Eighty percent of the vehicles that cross the Peace Bridge are cars. Only 20 percent are trucks. As a result of the Trade Act, very few of those 20 percent are being referred to secondary.

The other thing that is important to recognize is that the requirements in the secondary area has changed. Now they have x-ray machines that they run the trucks through. We currently have one of those machines on our plaza, but we really need two because now, if one truck gets referred to the x-ray machine and the one after it does as well, then that whole line has to wait. What we’re really looking at is the number of referrals to the x-ray machine, but it is a lot faster than unloading the whole truck, which took a lot of time.

We will have 11 truck bays, which I believe is fewer than we have now, but technology is allowing us to process those trucks through quicker. It takes five minutes to go through the x-ray machine, but it took hours to unload the truck. Now, if they see an anomaly in the truck, it is referred to x-ray, but they’re actually doing fewer physical inspections.

ONE BIG SYSTEM

BJ: That explains space needs at the plaza, but why do you need three more bridge lanes?

RR: It’s important to understand that the bridge is actually an extension of the plaza.

What I mean by that is that the expedited programs, the low-risk programs like FAST or NEXUS for cars that are operated by both governments, only work in the case that you can get to your booth, your NEXUS booth or FAST booth.

You have to look at it all as one system, because having dedicated NEXUS and FAST lanes really extends the plaza all the way across the river all the way over to the QEW in Canada, and that makes a tremendous difference to the functionality of the bridge. Right now, if you have a NEXUS card and a booth on the other end of the bridge, but there’s traffic on the bridge, it is not doing you any good.

You have to treat the bridge as an extension of the plaza, and that’s the difference with a bridge crossing the Niagara River, an international river, and a bridge crossing the Mississippi River. In our current environment with the traffic volumes right now, in the case of the Mississippi River, we wouldn’t be building a bridge. We’re building a bridge because it has to be part of the border system. There are other reasons, having to do with redundancy and those things, but we’re building it to make the border work better. That means accommodating all of the NEXUS and FAST needs, as well as long–term volume.

BJ: When the new bridge is built, there will be dedicated lanes all the way across?

RR: Yes. If you were a NEXUS cardholder, you would have a dedicated NEXUS lane right on the bridge. That’s the intention. We also think it would have a big impact on NEXUS enrollment, because right now people aren’t bothering. It is only good for the last few hundred feet. If you cross frequently, it’s worth it.

LOCATION

BJ: Why not shift the truck traffic to the International Railway Bridge, as some people suggest?

RR: First and foremost, people tend to forget that there is another country involved when they say that.

In Canada, you would need to build a five-kilometer-long freeway from the river to link up with the QEW, and that would be on Bowen Road. That is not within the existing rail corridor. A rail corridor is very narrow; there is a railway and a little bit of ballast on either side. A thruway corridor, which is what’s being proposed by the Ambassador Bridge, would be 200 to 250 feet wide, running all the way from the bridge, immediately adjacent to an existing community, through wetlands and wood lots, all the way to hook up with the QEW at Bowen Road.

Fort Erie has made it very clear that it is unacceptable, and I can understand why. From their perspective, why build a new highway from the river to Bowen road while the QEW and the existing Peace Bridge are nowhere near capacity? The Province and Niagara have said the same thing, so the justification from a Canadian perspective is very difficult.

The second issue is that it is not for trucks only. The Ambassador Bridge has said very clearly that it would also operate for cars. The Jarvis Street area, which is the old historical downtown area of Fort Erie, would have no reason to have people get off the bridge and go into downtown Fort Erie. So there is no connectivity with the local community with that bridge.

On the American side, there have been a number of riverfront initiatives, including parklands, Squaw Island, Greenway—all of those things have an impact. The I-190 is at capacity north of the Peace Bridge. There is an issue with putting more traffic on an already strained section of Thruway infrastructure. The whole interchange between the Scajaquada and the 190 would have to be reconstructed, and you would be bringing a lot of traffic through from Delaware Park on 198, which, as you know, people are trying to downscale.

Also, people forget that there is a community adjacent to the plaza at Black Rock, where the Ambassador plaza is proposed to be. It’s not some little tiny plaza that is being proposed at the international railway crossing.

Another thing that people forget is that you would need a duplication of customs facilities. That’s a Canadian customs on the Canadian side, and a US customs facility on the US side. All of this drives the cost up, so it doesn’t make any sense economically. It doesn’t make any sense socially to the community. It also doesn’t make any sense environmentally in Canada.

All of that was extensively studied in the scoping document, and it was reviewed with the Federal Highway Administration and the City of Buffalo, for that matter. It was uniformly agreed that that was not a feasible alternative for all the reasons that I’ve stated.

It’s no different than what the Ambassador Bridge is proposing in Windsor/Detroit. They’re proposing a twinning of their bridge, and in that case there they actually have a huge issue with even getting to their bridge. There is something like 18 traffic lights. Can you imagine all of the truck traffic that’s on the Peace Bridge right now going through Delaware Avenue in Buffalo? That’s the situation in Windsor. What the government is proposing there is twinning their bridge, and they’re doing a Detroit River International Crossing study, which is actually proposing a bridge downstream from the existing bridge on the Detroit River, which the Ambassador Bridge is vehemently opposed to. It’s funny that we are proposing an expansion in the existing plaza, and they think it’s wrong, but in the Windsor/Detroit area, they think it is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

It’s important for people to know that the International Railway Crossing was studied extensively through the scoping process, and was deemed something that we could not carry any further in the DEIS. People in the neighborhood are saying right now, “Why don’t we move down to the International Railway Bridge?” But there is no doubt that using the existing corridor has the least environmental impact when you look at all the factors.

TAKING HOUSES

BJ: You just referred to the neighborhood people. They say that your current plan is going to destroy a viable neighborhood.

RR: Will there be a loss of some houses? Yes. That’s unfortunate. It’s certainly not something we would like to see, but we have scaled this plaza down to be as small as possible. The plaza design, to a large extent, is being decided by the Department of Homeland Security. What is within our control is very limited.

We’ve already taken what we can off the plaza. We’ve taken the tolls and moved them off the Buffalo side and moved them over to Fort Erie. We’ve moved the administration facilities over to Fort Erie. We’ve made it al small as we possibly can.

People have to understand that yes, there will be some homes lost, but let me talk about the advantages. For 15 years, this neighborhood has been in a state of uncertainty, because there was no indication of where the Peace Bridge was going with this. First and foremost, this will give them some certainty as to whether they should stay or whether they should go. If they stay, what are the advantages? The whole area, which is the historical part of this neighborhood, is from Rhode Island south. If you look at this neighborhood from Rhode Island south, there will be significant enhancements of that neighborhood.

Front Park will no longer be bisected by international traffic. Busti Avenue will no longer be a connection to the bridge, where it currently is getting a lot of international bridge traffic. Currently there is no buffer between the plaza and the neighborhood south of Rhode Island. With the new plaza, there will be a delineation and a heavy buffer so that they will not see the plaza, and for once and for all, this neighborhood will be sheltered and screened from the plaza, which is something that they’ve been asking for a long time. Because one of the main problems we have on the plaza right now is idling and stop-and-go traffic. What I mean by that is that at the corner of this neighborhood, which is at the corner of Busti and Vermont with that traffic light, all the traffic starts and stops at that light, having a direct impact on the neighborhood right across the street. That will be eliminated. All the traffic will be free-flowing going into Canada, and with the additional booths in the plaza, there are going to be improvements in air quality.

TRUCKS

BJ: What about the change in truck regulations?

RR: That’s a huge impact. In 2006, 80 percent of the diesel fuel had to be ultra-low-sulfur diesel fuel. In 2010, it has to be 100 percent. What that means is that prior to 2006, there was 500 parts per million of sulfur. That’s been reduced 97 percent, and sulfur is the element that causes the particulate matter. With this new regulation becoming mandatory, the 2007 engine models all had to have catalytic converters and particulate traps, to the point where the emissions from a 2007 truck running ultra-low-sulfur diesel fuel, the emissions would be 90 percent lower than a truck running the old fuel on the old engines. That’s the equivalent of taking 90 percent of the trucks off of the bridge.

The way it’s been described to me is that somebody cutting their grass in the neighborhood with a two-cycle engine in their lawn mower is putting our more emissions than the diesel truck. These new regulations have a huge positive impact.

BJ: How long will it be until those new trucks using that new fuel dominate the traffic on the bridge?

RR: Obviously it takes some time, and generally speaking trucks can be around for a long time. It could take 15-20 years for all of the trucks to get off the roads that are currently running the old engines. However, most of the traffic that is on the Peace Bridge is long-haul, which means that it’s coming from afar and it is going far. Those trucks are usually replaced every five to seven years, and the reason for that is that the trucking companies don’t want their trucks breaking down in the middle on Nevada far away from any type of services. So, what happens is that any type of long-haul truck goes to intra-city urban transport.

Theoretically, by the time the plaza opens on the Peace Bridge, which would be 2014, seven years from now, a vast majority of the trucks running in the area would be running on ultra-low-sulfur diesel fuel.

LOSERS

BJ: Who is going to lose as a result of this?

RR: People that don’t want to move are going to lose, but most people do want to move out of the neighborhood. Part of it is that they don’t want to live next to the Peace Bridge. A number of people have come to a conclusion that parts of the neighborhood are stressed, particularly the area north of Rhode Island, so I am going to suggest that the neighborhood is split. A lot of people want to move and are supportive of this initiative.

Some people don’t want to move, and those people are particularly on the section of Columbus Parkway between Rhode Island and Vermont. In those cases, we are allowed to do one, or if the homeowner wishes, two appraisals, and the homeowner is allowed to go with the appraiser, point out areas of significant value in the home that they feel they should be compensated for, so they get market value for their home. There aren’t going to be any low-ball offers or anything like that. Secondly, they are reimbursed for all of their moving expenses and closing costs. Thirdly, the thing that a lot of people are not aware of, we are obligated to find them a house of similar size and quality. It has to be a decent, safe and sanitary accommodation. If someone is in a home right now, a mother and a father with two kids, a boy and a girl who are sharing a room, when we relocate them, we are obligated to find them a three-bedroom house, because the rules are that the boy and the girl have to have separate bedrooms. In some cases, we are obligated by law to upgrade the house.

It’s also important for people to understand that if people move to another area within a certain radius of their existing home, if the market of that newer house is higher, we have to pay the difference. If they’re selling their place, based on appraisal, for $100,000, and the home that we’re putting them into is more, then we pay the difference. The homeowner has the option to pick their new home based on the market that’s been established. The intent is that no one will go to a lesser house based on what we’re paying.

BJ: Some people say that the Peace Bridge process itself has reduced property values in the neighborhood, therefore when you say that you’ll find the same of a slightly higher quality place, they say that their house would be worth a lot more…

RR: Listening to the people in the neighborhood who don’t want to move, you would get the sense that this is a pristine neighborhood, and people are wanting to get in with the homes being what they are. A lot of times, you’ll hear them say that this is a stressed neighborhood, so they want it both ways. The point is that if the market for the house that they’re moving into is higher, we pay for that difference.

BJ: How many homes are we talking about?

RR: It’s still subject to discussion, but right now it’s about 90 structures that will be taken, but in totality it is about 100 properties. We’re in the process of reducing that, particularly in the area between Rhode Island and Vermont. We think we can preserve some of those homes on Columbus between Rhode Island and Vermont, but that’s not a final number. That’s what’s in the DEIS [Draft Environmental Impact Statement, which is online at http://peacebridgex.com], but it’s a draft document, and we need to make some modifications to make sure that we can preserve as many homes as possible.

Next week: What happened to the northern plaza? How big a role does Homeland Security play in project design? And what about the Front and Fort Porter?

Bruce Jackson’s previous articles on the Peace Bridge are online at http://buffaloreport.com/allbridge.com. His most recent book is Cummins Wide: Photographs from the Arkansas Prison, published this month by Center for Documentary Studies and Center Working Papers. He is SUNY Distinguished Professor and Samuel P. Capen Professor of American Culture at UB.