North American Chokepoints

The Ambassador Bridge blockage, regardless of which side you are on, is showing a critical weakness which leaves us exposed to natural disasters, terrorism, and war. How can one bridge bring our auto industry to a halt?

I looked on Google Earth to see why they couldn't simply reroute traffic over another bridge. The only other reasonably close bridge is the "Blue Water Bridge", off to the north. It would be out of the way, but I expect truckers would only take a few hours to a day more to go that way. Why haven't they? There are also two rail bridges - so why not ship enough to keep the auto plants running by rail? With modern container shipping, it really doesn't matter how or on what they are routed. As a last resort, I expect there are still ports and ships on the Great Lakes?

This whole situation was largely artificially created by companies so eager for maximum profits that they closed the door on any backup systems and had no plans in place for emergencies. Even though obvious alternatives exist.

It was also aided by governments that could have built more bridges, but didn't want to spend the money or wanted to keep border crossings to a minimum for security reasons, though our government seems to have no such problem on our southern border - which is the one that most needs to be secured.

All bridges are potential chokepoints of varying effectiveness. How are we securing the most vital ones? Maintaining them? Are plans and financing in place to replace them on a schedule?

The situation is similar on the west coast of the USA, where the existing container ports are barely able to handle normal traffic and totally collapsed when overloaded by a see-sawing supply chain. That situation is harder to resolve, as it takes a long time to build a new port. Or we could build the new canal north of Panama, which plan has been on hold for many years.

Then there are all the chokepoints we haven't yet discovered. Every one of them is a potential disaster for the United States. All our power and communications run through the major cities, which are becoming third world disaster areas which might explode at any moment. They could shut down the nation's electricity, internet, and phone system. LA has shown that the rail systems are not to be depended upon where they pass through cities. Are there any alternatives that AVOID cities?

Of course, one obvious solution would be to manufacture and produce more at home. And locally at home as well. But you don't want to make yourself completely dependent on that, either. Domestic disturbances, bad weather, disease outbreaks, etc. could make that a punishingly bad choice if you don't have access to worldwide supplies. And of course you still need to get the raw materials to produce industrial products.

Understanding logistics is critically important. When your systems are running with no inventories, on a skeleton crew, and with little backup and poor if any planning, you have a REAL PROBLEM. The problem becomes even worse when a pandemic is loose. If we get involved in a European and/or Asian war, how do we plan to supply the troops there? If we divert ships, planes and trucks to that purpose, we will make the domestic situation even worse. We have almost no Merchant Marine anymore, so the ships will have to be confiscated from the foreign-flagged container fleet. That would cause an international incident in itself. We don't have enough truck drivers to handle domestic needs now - where are they going to come from? Everything diverted to the military will make the depressing domestic situation even worse and will fuel more division and domestic disturbance.

We need some real leaders, (not more dictatorial bosses), who will start researching weaknesses and chokepoints, planning for things in advance and start getting us prepared for them. It will cost money, but not nearly as much as letting things drift along until the next disaster hits.