Expressway Expansion Brings More Traffic
While the two decades of physical improvements on the Bridge were occurring, other developments near the Ambassador Bridge would bring dramatic increases in its traffic growth during the '60s and '70s. In 1970, Bridge car traffic started to drop because of the-then two-year-old John Lodge Expressway, which carried car traffic directly downtown, and consequently, to the Tunnel. It was not until the mid-1960s that work began on construction of a leg of Interstate 75 that would run right by the Bridge.

The 1-75 stretch from Toledo to the Bridge opened in 1967. And by 1970, 1-75 had been completed north of the Bridge through midtown Detroit, providing the Bridge with a connection with the interstate highway system that was further extended with the construction of a stretch of 1-96 near the Bridge giving the Bridge direct links with 1-75,1-96 and 1-94.

On the Canadian side, the City of Windsor and the Province of Ontario rebuilt the four-lane highway leading into the Bridge late in the decade. New entrances and exits were built on the Bridge terminal to tie into the new highway in 1970. In 1965, two other developments further stimulated use of the Bridge: the U.S. - Canada auto trade pact, which caused a heavy increase in truck traffic of new cars and auto parts, and the opening of the new Windsor Raceway. Tolls have been increased just once since 1957 when car tolls were established at 60 cents and 10 cents a passenger.

In July 1971, those rates were dropped, and one all-inclusive toll of 75 cents per car, including all passengers, was established. At the same time, the former commuter rate of 45 cents and 10 cents per passenger was revised to the all-inclusive rate of 50 cents, with the purchase of a 40-ticket commuter book. These toll rates are still in effect today, as is the truck rate of 1 cent per hundred pounds, the rate filed with the first toll tariff in 1940.

Changes
In 1965, five years after stepping down as chairman, Joseph A. Bower retired as a director of the Detroit International Bridge Co. He was named honorary chairman. Ten years later, a second son, Joseph W. Bower, was elected to the Board, and succeeded his brother Robert as chairman in 1977. Both served as absentee officers of the Company. On August 15, 1977, Joseph A. Bower would die in his Florida home at the age of 96.

Gone was the man who had moved to Detroit at the age of two. He had left school after the fifth grade upon his father's death, and went to work at the age of 10. He held three jobs simultaneously as a boy - office boy for ex-Circuit Court Judge William M. Lillibridge in the morning, porter and sales clerk in a sporting goods store in the afternoon and signal officer for the Detroit Police Department from I a.m. 'til dawn.

In the tradition of an earlier time, he "read law" under the judge, and passed the bar examination without a formal education. Determined to grasp the intricacies of finance as well, he entered the Detroit Business University.

At the age of 19, young Joseph was hired by the Detroit Trust Company. By 1924, the year Bower actually undertook the Ambassador Bridge project at John Austin's urgings, he was a vice president of J. P. Morgan's New York Trust Company.

His success was not that of a banker, but of a business man who understood finance. His was the proverbial knack for taking "lemons and making lemonade," and his reputation for converting soured loans into solid accounts bordered on the legendary. Henry Ford turned to him during the Ford Motor Company's fiscal crisis in 1921.