Trucks idle on the Ambassador Bridge returning to Detroit from Canada on Oct. 17, 2023. Credit: Lauren Abdel-Razzaq

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Planet Detroit
This story also appeared in Planet Detroit

By summer, Detroit plans to enact the truck route ordinance for which Southwest Detroit residents have petitioned since 1938. The ordinance aims to reduce truck traffic and associated pollution in residential areas by establishing designated routes. 

Southwest Detroit residents have endured generations of pollution, noise, and dust from truck traffic serving dozens of intermodal facilities and heavy industry in and around residential areas.

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The Ambassador Bridge is crossed by around 10,000 trucks a day, adding to diesel exhaust pollution, which contains particulate matter associated with heart and lung problems and pollutants like nitrogen oxides, which are significant drivers of pollution-related deaths.

Augusta Gudeman, freight infrastructure specialist with the City of Detroit, outlined plans for the rollout, education, and enforcement tied to the ordinance at a March 12 Southwest Detroit Environmental Vision meeting with residents.

“I can’t promise that we’re going to 100% get it passed at that time, but that is what we’re aiming for,” Gudeman said of the city’s summer timeline.

What the truck ordinance means for Southwest Detroit

The proposed truck routes prioritize major arteries like Michigan Avenue, keeping trucks away from dense residential areas like Clark Street, Scotten Street, and Toledo Street. 

Once the ordinance is signed into law, new signage will clearly mark the routes trucks can or cannot travel, Gudeman said, and police will issue citations and fines to trucks and companies breaking the law. 

The community will need to alert the city of any issues with signage or to report a truck traveling on a restricted road, she said. The exact reporting method is still being developed.

“We don’t have a streamlined way of taking in information and feedback specifically related to trucks,” Gudeman said. “We’re going to create something that’s a little clearer for folks to use, so we’ve got better data to understand the issues that are emerging.”

Throughout 2025 and beyond, the city will continue to educate residents, businesses, and truck drivers, Gudeman said. The city asked residents to weigh in on truck route ordinance language, new street and signage designs, new intersection designs, and enhanced street sweeping operations, she said. 

Robert Andersen, 20-year Hubbard Farms resident, said in an area where “you can see [pollution] residue on patio furniture,” directing traffic from intermodal facilities onto the highway, instead of residential areas, is the “real issue.”

Andersen moved to Southwest just as the exchange for the Ambassador Bridge was rerouted from residential areas to the freeway. 

“That helped out quite a bit,” Andersen said. “It’s pretty remarkable. Over the last 20 years, the quality of life has gotten better.”

Andersen said the neighborhood is “vigilant” and when something doesn’t seem right, residents question it immediately.

“Our corporate neighbors are always looking for an opportunity to push things a little further that might put the neighborhood at risk, but we do push back,” he said.

The Ambassador Bridge, built in 1929, carries about 25% of the vehicular traffic between the U.S. and Canada, according to an environmental assessment by its owner, the Detroit International Bridge Company. 

How Southwest Detroit truck traffic could be rerouted

Southwest Detroit is home to more than a dozen major generators of freight activity, such as the Ambassador Bridge, the Detroit Produce Terminal, and Oasis Trucking, last year’s city truck route study states. Many large freight generators are near interstates, but some are located in or near residential areas.

Among the top freight generators is the Detroit Intermodal Freight Terminal, a key trade hub for local and international travel housing operations for rail, shipping containers, and trucking. The facility clocks nearly 2,000 trucks a day at one of its entrances on Federal Street, according to daily averages counted by a camera between October and December 2022 in the city’s study.

Local traffic from trucks traveling to and from industrial and logistics facilities along the Norfolk Southern railroad line, which runs east-west between the Michigan Martin and Springwells neighborhoods in Southwest, may have a harder time with their current route under the proposed ordinance.

The ordinance identifies “issue routes” in Southwest Detroit. These are streets with known or expected truck traffic in sensitive areas, like homes, schools, parks, and community centers. 

In order to defray truck travel on the issue routes, the following road segments would likely experience increased truck volumes once the ordinance is in effect, according to the city:

  • Michigan Avenue: Livernois Avenue to southbound I-75 Service Drive.
  • Livernois Avenue: I-94 to Vernor Highway.
  • I-75/Fisher Service Drive: Michigan Avenue to West Grand Boulevard.
  • Vernor Highway: Waterman Street to Livernois Avenue.
  • John Kronk Street/Southern Avenue: Wyoming Avenue to Livernois Avenue.
  • West Grand Boulevard: Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard to Michigan Avenue.
  • Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard: I-96 Service Drive to West Grand Boulevard. 

Michael Belzer, professor of economics at Wayne State University, said the expected smooth flow of traffic depends on broader economic conditions. With an economic downturn and trade tensions at hand, truck traffic might decrease overall, Belzer said. 

“What you notice when you have recessions, is that there’s no traffic jams anymore,” Belzer said. “[Tariffs] would cut the number of trucks going across the bridge, because there’s nothing to haul.”