Long weekend travel through Windsor-Detroit tunnel down 3 per cent, CEO says

U.S.-bound traffic through the Windsor-Detroit tunnel was down approximately three per cent over the Victoria Day long weekend compared with the same period last year, according to the tunnel's CEO.

It's a similar change in traffic to the Easter weekend in April when U.S.-bound traffic was down around four per cent, Tal Czudner said.

"Our traffic is actually pretty comparable 2024 to 2025 just because we have so many daily commuters and people who use the tunnel kind of as part of their normal routine," Czudner said.

But, he added, "weekend traffic the last couple months has been down, usually, 15 to 18 per cent."

Those numbers relate to the number of vehicles crossing the border, not the number of individual people, Czudner added.

The number of people crossing is down about 20 per cent each week for the past two months, he said, signalling a significant dip in what he called "discretionary travel" — while the number of single-occupant vehicles carrying cross-border workers remains fairly consistent. 

At the same time, he said, the relatively minor dips in travel over the course of the past two long weekends suggests that Canadians are still traveling to the U.S. on special occasions. 

Some of the traffic headed south over the May long weekend was bound for the Post Malone and Jelly Roll concert at Detroit's Ford Field, he said.

April numbers from U.S. Customs and Border Protection show U.S.-bound passenger vehicle travel across the Ambassador Bridge and through the Windsor-Detroit tunnel, was down nearly seven per cent over all compared with April of 2024 — from approximately 287,000 vehicles in April of 2024 to approximately 267,000 vehicles in 2025.

In fact, the number of passenger vehicles crossing into the U.S. via those two crossings has been down an average of 21,000 per month from February through April.

Passenger vehicle traffic across the Blue Water Bridge and on the Walpole Algonac Ferry in the Sarnia area, meanwhile, was down nearly 30 per cent in April compared with April of 2024 — from around 78,400 vehicles to around 55,100. 

Nationwide, Canadian residents' return trips to the United States by car dropped 35.2 per cent in April compared with April of 2024, according to Statistics Canada. 

Canadian road trips by U.S. residents dropped 10.7 per cent during the same time period.