There are tunnels under the Detroit River too, for rail and cars crossings to Canada. The two downtowns are directly across the river. So a cool thing would be a Gondola. Things went to shit after 911. Instead of opening the borders like in the European Union. The borders got more closed down, and things regressed.
Im not entirely sure how your drawing your conclusion.
I grew up in suburban Detroit. Access to Canada has always been easy. You need proper identification, but it’s not by any means “locked down”. Beyond personal experience, I had acquaintances with cottages in Canada. They never have any issues traveling.
Was a gradual shift after 9/11. US started requiring passports (on paper, but if you're a US citizen entering without one, I don't think they can do much more than give you a hard time). Lots more quizzing upon entry into US.
Good ole days (pre-2000) meant giving a verbal declaration of citizenship and being sure to have a decades old crumbly birth certificate if they asked.
Canada technically doesn't require passports at the land border, but they make it more of a hassle if you don't have one.
On the plus side, the Canadian side cares a lot less about whether returning Canadians owed taxes & duties. The booths used to be staffed by a division of the CRA (Canadian IRS) and unarmed.
This. Pre-9/11 my family used to pop over to Windsor for dinner, and that was absolutely unremarkable. Every 19-year-old would hit the bars over there, because that was the drinking age. And the outlet mall parking lots on the Michigan side were constantly packed with Ontario license plates.
I'm jealous of the Niagara crossing that has a pedestrian bridge called the Rainbow Bridge because you can see the rainbow in the falls' mist from the middle of the span. Areas on both sides are pedestrian-friendly and you can just walk across, for a $1 fee. It sucks that you can't get from Detroit to Windsor without either your own vehicle, or boarding a grubby bus.
It’s worth mentioning that the enhanced driver’s licenses and state IDs are still valid, which tend to be easier to acquire and require far less paperwork if one is already getting a license/state ID, so residents of the more populated border states have a somewhat more seamless option.
> if you're a US citizen entering without one, I don't think they can do much more than give you a hard time
I’ve always wondered what they would do.
In the 90’s, I once showed up at the US border without documentation and basically was let through after a 30 second lecture. I wonder if it would still work like that?
