Windsor eyes Aug. 31 as end date for tunnel bus to Detroit

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More than 94 years after it started ferrying passengers through a new international crossing, Windsor’s tunnel bus to Detroit could cease to operate this summer.

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A staff report going to a city council committee next week suggests an Aug. 31 end to the unique cross-border public transit service, which Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens chopped from the city’s budget earlier this year.

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That date, the report said, aligns with a process at Transit Windsor that sees operators sign up for shifts based on seniority. New shifts and a new service implementation plan are scheduled to begin in September.

Administration recommends maintaining the special events bus to and from Detroit until December 30, allowing the city to “generate revenue from events” which would help to offset an expected variance and “cost pressures” in the 2025 Transit Windsor operating budget that result from paid federally mandated sick days.

The 2025 operating budget Dilkens tabled in January proposed eliminating both the tunnel bus and special events bus to save as much as $1.6 million in annual expenses. Later that month, council voted 7-4 to save the service — but Dilkens vetoed that council majority vote using authority granted to him under Ontario’s ‘strong mayor’ legislation.

At the time, Dilkens said he didn’t want Windsor taxpayers subsidizing trips to Detroit while Canada is under “economic attack” from U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade threats. Some of those threats, in the form of steep new tariffs on good, have since become a reality.

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“Why would we want to subsidize economic development in the United States when their president is assaulting our communities? We receive almost no benefit in return,” Dilkens said last month.

Council attempted to override Dilkens’s veto but fell short of the required 8-3 (or two-thirds) majority the strong mayor legislation requires. Six councillors voted to save the service in February.

Administration has found another reason to support the tunnel bus’s demise.

City staff learned that United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) plans to introduce a new border pre-clearance requirement for bus carriers entering the country — changes that pose “significant operational challenges for the tunnel bus,” the report said.

Known as the Advance Passenger Information System program, the change will require all bus passengers to be pre-screened through a manifest with “detailed personal and travel information” and submitted by the transit operator prior to departure.

“As a fixed-route, public transit operation with multiple stops and frequent service, the tunnel bus is not equipped to function like a charter bus requiring advance passenger manifests,” the report said.

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“Implementing this requirement would either force the elimination of all but one bus stop or require costly staffing to manually collect and process passenger information in advance of each trip. Without substantial investment in staff and technology, the city would have been unable to maintain a scheduled tunnel bus service under the new requirements.”

The new CBP requirements will be voluntary this year but will become mandatory in 2026, the staff report said.

Buses and drivers previously dedicated to cross-border travel will be reallocated to the regular Transit Windsor system.

The tunnel bus, which once broke even, was expected to cost the city between $1.4 million and $1.6 million this year. That’s because of changes to the Labour Code of Canada enacted in 2022 that grant all federally regulated employees — including Transit Windsor’s roughly 300 workers — 10 days of paid medical leave each year on top of their existing benefits.

Transit Windsor is only federally regulated because it provides a service that crosses an international border. Even if one driver operates the tunnel bus to Detroit on one day each year, the organization’s entire staff complement would be entitled to the extra sick days mandated by Ottawa and paid for by the city.

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The city will still incur the entire 2025 cost of the sick days regardless of when the tunnel bus and special events service stop rolling, the report said.

With a final operating date of Aug. 30, the tunnel bus is projected to bring in $410,800. The special events bus is expected to bring in another $228,000, for a total projected revenue of $638,800 from cross-border transit in 2025.

Those revenue projections are based on the current fare of $10 each way. And while the staff report acknowledges that it’s possible ridership may decline as the service nears its end date, the city based its estimates on 2024 ridership figures.

Comprised of five city councillors, the environment, transportation, and public safety standing committee will discuss and vote on the staff recommendation on March 26. The committee’s decision will be seen as a recommendation for city council, but the council majority will have the final say at a future meeting.

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