In November 2004, Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge was tired of the almost daily complaints about long wait times for cargo and passengers trying to cross the Canadian-U.S. border into southeastern Michigan. There was good reason for these complaints. Long lines of trucks and cars queued up to cross the border as they negotiated stepped-up security processes put in place by Customs and Border Protection.

While people supported improved border security, the immediate consequences were longer lines and slower transit times at border-crossing points. The average wait time for trucks and cars had increased to over 35 minutes, and it all too often exceeded two hours during peak traffic periods. Border congestion in southeastern Michigan was giving shippers, manufacturers, and importers real fits and driving up costs.

With nearly $1 billion in trade crossing across the U.S.-Canadian border each day, these delays were rippling through the economy, causing an estimated $5 billion in lost productivity per year, according to the Ontario Chamber of Commerce. Over 40% of U.S. trade with Canada (our largest trade partner) crosses the border in southeastern Michigan; much of that trade was stuck in long lines at the border.

Thus, in late November, Secretary Ridge called and told me to get up to Detroit and see what could be done. I was not the most senior member of the Secretary’s staff, serving as a member of the Office of the Private Sector, but I had argued for months that many of our challenges at DHS, such as visa reform and supply chain security, would require a real partnership with the private sector because the government alone was unable to develop a working solution.

It was my belief that the government did not have the resources, knowledge, or entrepreneurial energy required for a task of this magnitude. The strongest advocate of this limited role of government and the need to form public-private partnerships to achieve superior results was President Bush, who has often said that sometimes the government can do the most by getting out of the way and letting the nation’s entrepreneurs do what they do best: solve problems.

So I was off to Detroit to see whether DHS could form a public-private partnership with the specific goal of reducing traffic congestion at border crossings and moving legitimate crossers much more quickly. It would be a great test to see whether the President’s notion of tapping the resources in the private sector could help the department reach a specific and tangible goal of reducing long wait times at the border. Certainly a great idea, but would it work?

My first step was to call all the owners and operators of the cross-border vehicular bridges and tunnel in eastern Michigan. There are three major crossings: the largest is the Ambassador Bridge, easily the most important cross-border trade artery in the world, with more than 9 million trucks and passenger cars crossing each year. The next largest is the Blue Water Bridge in Port Huron, MI, about 55 miles away, with a flow of 6 million trucks and cars annually. The Detroit-Windsor Tunnel is used annually by 5.7 million cars and trucks.

Normally, the owners and operators of these crossings are tough competitors seeking to lure cross-border traffic to their facilities, thereby capturing the tolls associated with each trip. But they all confronted a common problem of slow transit times and congestion, which was not only making their customers (truck drivers, cargo companies, and tourists crossing into the United States from Canada) irate, but forcing large manufacturers to start rethinking their operations with the distinct possibility of relocating to other regions where they could escape the congestion. In short, the owners and operators of the southeastern Michigan crossings knew that if they did not do something soon to fix the problem, they would lose customers, perhaps permanently.

Few in government thought it would be possible to get these normally fierce competitors to agree to cooperate to find common solutions to a common problem, but in truth, the government could not have had a better group of partners. The owners and operators of the crossing points knew best exactly how cargo and passenger cars could be moved across the border more quickly. In fact, when asked whether they would participate in a public-private partnership to reduce the border-crossing times in southeastern Michigan, Dan Stamper, President of the Ambassador Bridge, wanted to know what took us so long. Not only were they ready to help, he said, they would pledge the resources needed and put their best people on the team. Not only were the bridge and tunnel owners convinced that it could be done, they were willing to contribute the resources and effort to make it happen.

Secretary Ridge was delighted to hear that the private sector was eager to participate. He was also convinced that such a collaborative effort could reduce transit times by 25%. Thus, on 17 December 2004, Secretary Ridge and Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan met in Detroit and announced the “25% Challenge.” Its goal was to make quantifiable improvements in the transit times and reduce traffic congestion by leveraging the resources and leadership of the bridge, tunnel, and ferry owners in southeastern Michigan—specifically, to reduce transit times by 25% within one year.

To be sure, the “25% Challenge” faced a great deal of initial skepticism, especially within the ranks of the career Customs and Border Protection senior leadership. They were concerned that Secretary Ridge had made a commitment to a measurable goal. They argued instead for vaguer objectives like “improve the transit times.” To his credit, Secretary Ridge made a commitment to a quantifiable goal and a specific date by which it would be accomplished.

The private-sector stakeholders quickly came up with suggestions that could alleviate border congestion without requiring additional lanes or infrastructure:

• Stan Korosec, [A1]from the Blue Water Bridge, suggested converting some of the inspection booths dedicated to passenger cars to dual-use booths that could serve trucks or cars as the situation demanded. Previously, Customs and Border Protection inspectors were unable to process trucks through lanes that were set up for the exclusive use of passenger cars. Similarly, traffic lanes dedicated to passenger cars could not process trucks. Korosec’s simple idea would allow a dramatically increased flow of traffic.
• Neil Belitsky, the General Manager of the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel, helped Customs and Border Protection officials better predict traffic flows so they could surge inspectors in anticipation of peak periods.
• Dan Stamper, President of the Ambassador Bridge, came up with an innovative way to increase the number of inspection booths that could be used during peak periods.

These were only a few of the many ideas that were proposed. Any idea that was judged to have a solid chance of speeding the flow of legitimate traffic while allowing federal officers to properly enforce a high level of security was fully considered by Customs and Border Protection. The best were rapidly implemented.

Perhaps one of the most important steps that this public-private partnership took was to develop, with the active participation of the bridge and tunnel owners, an accurate system of measuring wait times. In the past, estimates of wait times were randomly taken by both the private sector and the government. Neither system was accurate or reliable. We established a working group to combine the information collected by Customs and Border Protection and the data that bridge and tunnel owners possessed, allowing the team to develop a system to precisely measure wait times. More important, the team could now precisely measure the effect of individual measures and initiatives on crossing times.

Very quickly, crossing times in southeastern Michigan grew measurably shorter as suggestions were tested. Initial successes generated wide enthusiasm and more suggestions. The American Trucking Association and the Canadian Trucking Alliance also contributed ideas that sped the flow of cross-border traffic.

By the summer of 2005, nine months after Secretary Ridge and Canadian Deputy Prime Minister McLellan issued the 25% Challenge, the results were greater than skeptics had believed possible. The average transit time for a truck or car crossing the border dropped from over 35 minutes to under 6 minutes. Within the next few months, wait times plummeted to less than 3 minutes at several of the busiest crossing points. Frequent long queues became a thing of the past. Our original goal turned out to be too modest. Public-private cooperation actually reduced wait times by more than 70%. Given that the cost of an idling truck is estimated at $150 per hour, this success yields significant savings for manufacturers. It also reduces uncertainty at just-in-time manufacturing facilities.

There were several keys to this success:

• Leadership. Secretary Ridge and Deputy Prime Minister McLellan challenged all stakeholders to get involved in finding a solution to a significant problem.
• Goal setting. The establishment of a bold, specific goal inspired imagination and collaboration.
• Flexibility. Customs and Border Protection officials were open to new ideas.
• Cooperation. Instead of competing with each other, all crossing facility owner-operators contributed to a common cause. Customs and Border Protection also became fully engaged in the search for solutions to the problem of congestion. All federal, state, provincial, and local agencies involved with border crossings pitched in too.
• Commitment. All involved were determined not just to reach the 25% goal but to quickly surpass it.
• True public-private collaboration. While the government frequently establishes public-private partnerships, too often these “partnerships” are significantly skewed, with the government setting the agenda and developing all the initiatives, which it then expects the private sector to support. The 25% Challenge was a true public-private partnership where members met monthly and genuinely considered all ideas—good and bad—that could help meet the goal. Indeed, most of the leadership and the good ideas came from the private sector, not the government. All government officials were open to private-sector suggestions, allowing the leveraging of entrepreneurial energies and private-sector resources to solve common problems.

Perhaps the most important element of success was the early effort to develop a common set of metrics for measuring wait times. Before the 25% Challenge, none of the stakeholders could agree on how to measure transit times or record wait times. By developing a common set of metrics, the team could focus all its energy on making improvements that could be measured and quantified.

The 25% Challenge clearly demonstrated that a solid public-private partnership can help accomplish what the government cannot achieve alone. Without the leadership and entrepreneurial energy that came directly from the private sector, it is highly unlikely that any meaningful improvements would have resulted. In fact, long-serving career government officials never thought it would be possible to achieve any significant reduction without massive new government spending.

One of the exciting lessons learned from the efforts in eastern Michigan to reduce transit times and move legitimate trade and passengers across the border more quickly is the unavoidable fact that our existing border operations are painfully inefficient. We have designed and operate our border crossings with little consideration of how to make the process faster and with little consideration for constantly improving our ability to move traffic more quickly. Perhaps the most important lesson from eastern Michigan and the 25% Challenge is that we could, with very little direct investment and with full support of the private sector, make significant improvement at other border crossing points.

Nearly all of the other U.S. ports of entry along the borders are plagued by long wait times and traffic congestion. The long lines and snarled traffic could be significantly reduced if we have the will and the wisdom to tap the creative energies of the private sector to help find and implement solutions. What worked in Michigan would work at other places.