Commercial drivers bound for Canada via Michigan's Blue Water Bridge faced significant delays Thursday, due to a system outage experienced by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA). The disruption, initially stemming from routine maintenance on Sunday morning, was reported to have been resolved by Tuesday afternoon, yet the lingering effects precipitated a backlog, creating substantial wait times at ports of entry. The Detroit News cited CBSA spokesperson Guillaume Bérubé, who stated, "Although the outage has been resolved, commercial drivers continue to experience delays as we resume normal processing and continue to clear a backlog of requests that were received during the outage."
By Thursday evening, commercial traffic at the Blue Water Bridge—which connects Port Huron, Michigan, to Point Edward, Ontario—encountered a wait time of approximately seven hours; meanwhile passenger vehicles did not face the same hold-ups, in a report from ClickOnDetroit, the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) noted widespread congestion, with trucks backed up for miles and commercial drivers being warned of at least two-hour delays, they are working closely with IT partners to resolve this issue as soon as possible.
Elsewhere, on the Ambassador Bridge, which spans the Detroit River to connect Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, commercial vehicles saw wait times closer to two hours, and passenger vehicles around 30 minutes—a stark contrast to the relatively minor delays on the U.S. side, as reported by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection which were around 26 minutes for commercial traffic, suggesting differential impacts on the transportation infrastructure due to the CBSA system outage. The updates from the CBSA also highlighted the operational snags at other ports of entry, not only at the Blue Water Bridge but also affecting certain airport customs kiosks, as reported by CBS News Detroit.
