Canada and the U.S. risk losing as much as $28.6 billion US a year in trade by the year 2030 unless another bridge is built between Windsor and Detroit.

A new report from a joint governmental task force studying the need for a new crossing across the Detroit River, warns that daily traffic tie-ups on the Ambassador Bridge could be detrimental to the two economies over the next 26 years.

About 25 per cent of the trade between the U.S. and Canada goes through the Windsor-Detroit trade corridor – more than $1 billion a day. And 70 per cent of goods are moved by truck, according to the report from the Canada-U.S-Ontario-Michigan Border Transportation Partnership.

Richard Blouse, president of the Detroit Regional Chamber, is lobbying for a new bridge.

"There's no doubt in my mind there's justifiable need for a third crossing," he said. "Urgency should be applied to speed it up."

If approved, a new bridge could take 10 years to build at a cost of up to $600 million, but a decision on whether and where to build could take several years.

But U.S. federal highway officials don't share the task force's sense of urgency. They say the existing Ambassador Bridge has the capacity to handle 24,000 commercial vehicle crossings each day, yet it only attracts 50 per cent of that volume.

U.S. officials say that it isn't the volume of vehicles that's to blame for the congestion, but the holdups caused by border inspections and the lack of access to freeways from the bridge in Windsor.