The announcement was about half a year later than expected, but Canadian Pacific is finally pushing ahead with plans to bore a new $400-million railway tunnel under the Detroit River.

However, the news could be coming at the perfect time, with Michigan's state senate poised to vote on the DRIC road project next week. Perhaps the threat of rail competition will knock some sense into opponents of the international bridge.

It would be ideal if both projects are approved so that all of Windsor's main gateways can be replaced at the same time. In fact it would be fantastic -- and not just because of the construction jobs that would generate.

Can you imagine the energy and excitement that would be injected back into Windsor and Detroit's economies? With more than $5 billion worth of infrastructure work all going on at the same time, can you imagine how much attention we'd get?

And what better signal could a battered and bleeding region send to the world than simultaneously building two new international crossings -- again?

It would be a 21st century echo of the roaring 1920s, when both cities were ground zero for the economic explosion that was the birth of the automotive industry.

We were the envy of the industrialized world back then, and nothing signified that more than the competing bridge and tunnel construction projects.

But just as a few cranks in the Michigan senate continue to block the DRIC project, a few major hurdles still stand in the way of the new rail tunnel. Unlike DRIC, money is still a big question mark for the renamed Continental Rail Gateway.