Inside Michigan’s Underwater Entrance To Canada, The Detroit-Windsor Tunnel

My friend in England is quite the traveler, routinely making trips around Europe to see the sites and explore. She would tell me about how she could take a train almost anywhere, with a direct train from London to Paris. This threw me off a bit, considering the UK is separated from the rest of the continent by about 30 miles of water.

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Thankfully, the UK has a 31-mile-long tunnel, 23 miles underwater in the English Channel, which connects the UK to the rest of mainland Europe. This railway fascinated me, and upon searching for similar routes worldwide, I was flabbergasted to discover an engineering marvel in Michigan, specifically the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel. 

The History of the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel

While many people know about and traverse the Gordie Howe International Bridge, there is an alternative way to get across the Detroit River to/from Canada.  Nearly 100 years ago, engineers began construction on the 1-mile Detroit-Windsor Tunnel, a tunnel 1.6 miles beneath the Detroit River. When the project was initially proposed in 1919, it was "met with skepticism from experts" but was eventually approved in 1926

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Eventually, the Immersed Tube method was utilized to solve the question of how to get the tunnel underwater safely. This is done by breaking the tunnel into air-tight sections, which are then carefully attached underwater to ensure the seals aren't broken. At the time, this was a cutting-edge innovation that took only 6 months to complete and was finished a year ahead of schedule, opening in 1930.

The Detroit-Windsor Tunnel Today

The tunnel has an estimated 2,000 vehicles an hour. It is jointly owned by the Cities of Windsor, Ontario, and Detroit, Michigan, and to this day is the only existing underwater international passenger car border crossing. Taking the tunnel is surprisingly cheap, costing only $8.25 for most daily drivers, and the trip takes an average of 20 minutes from portal to portal.