Electric vehicle recharging stations at bridge would hurt budget: International Bridge Authority

The Ottawa-based Federal Bridge Corporation Limited (FBCL) has announced installation and deployment of its first two high capacity electric vehicle charging stations near the Duty Free Stores at the Thousand Islands International Bridge (Lansdowne, Ont.) and at the Blue Water Bridge (Point Edward, Ont.).

What of the International Bridge connecting the Twin Saults? 

“We’d like to put something at Sault Ste. Marie... but we selected Thousand Islands and Blue Water because there is a Tesla charging station near the International Bridge (at The Water Tower Inn). When we looked at possible locations we picked Thousand Islands and Blue Water because there wasn’t any infrastructure for electric vehicles anywhere nearby,” said Todd Kealey, FBCL spokesperson, speaking to SooToday.

“It is on the radar... maybe four to five years from now I can see it as a possibility,” Kealey added. 

“The plan is more focused, initially, on commercial vehicles, but electric trucks are still in the future for the most part...really what we’re doing at the moment is creating infrastructure to facilitate that, charging of electric trucks, and the electric cars are the beneficiary of that at the moment.”

But are electric vehicle recharging stations something local bridge officials necessarily want?

“We work hand in hand with them (the FBCL) and we were aware that they had opted not to go ahead at this time,” said Peter Petainen, International Bridge Authority (IBA) manager.

“Even if they were to pay to install, then it would be ours to operate and maintain. Those maintenance costs would be our responsibility... it’s a cost we’re not ready to share or take the burden of. My preference, and the board’s preference, has always been to put money back into the bridge first and foremost, into the bridge structure.”

“They (the FBCL) have been very generous with funding projects (such as the new bridge plaza) in the past...once we start to see more electric vehicles on the road, if they want to be generous with the funds in the future, obviously we’re certainly going to support them, but at this time with charging stations nearby, it really doesn’t seem to make good financial sense right now,” Petainen said.

The cost of maintaining electric vehicle charging stations would not jack up International Bridge crossing fees, Petainen said, “(however) if the charging stations were to go in today, any costs associated with maintaining it would have to come out of our fixed budget...something else would have to be put aside, we would have to reduce our maintenance of the facility. Something, somewhere in the budget would have to suffer and that’s not something that we’re prepared to do.”

“The charging units you would deploy at a home are typically between $1,000 and $5,000. They’re fairly affordable units, but when you’re talking about a high capacity unit you get into the $50,000, $75,000, $150,000 units (for electric trucks). For an electric truck you want to be able to have the capacity to charge that in an hour, not five or six,” the FBCL’s Kealey said.

“They're kind of pricey.”