CALAIS – Americans and Canadians are in agreement about the partial opening of a new $120 million bridge and custom houses for commercial traffic.

Area residents can expect to see truck traffic routed away from the downtown before the summer of 2009.

The announcement Thursday brought a sigh of relief from the community.

“The official word from the [U.S] General Services Administration is they are going to move forward … with a temporary opening for commercial truck traffic only that will happen sometime before the summer of 2009,” Calais City Manager Diane Barnes said Thursday. She said the partial opening is not expected to cost the federal government any more money.

“The full opening is targeted for November of that same year,” she added.

The new bridge will connect Calais with neighboring St. Stephen, New Brunswick, over the St. Croix River.

“I am breathing a sigh of relief for next summer. We can see a light at the end of the tunnel,” she said of 2009. Calais officials were worried the opening to truck traffic would be delayed for another year.

For the past few weeks there has been a breakdown in communication between the two countries. The United States was moving toward the partial opening of the bridge and the Canadians threw on the brakes, saying they wouldn’t go along with anything other than a full opening. That statement was made last week by a Canada Border Services Agency official at a bridge stakeholders meeting in Bangor. His statement reverberated from Calais to Washington, D.C., and from St. Stephen to Ottawa.

Officials got to work and on Thursday it became official that the United States will move forward with construction of its new U.S. Customs house and get enough done to open it to commercial traffic only, before the summer of next year.

The Canadians, who are speeding along with their part of the project, will have their $20 million customs house ready by the end of this year, but will wait to open it.

When the project started two years ago, it was hoped both customs facilities would be ready by the end of this year, but the General Services Administration plan ran into problems that delayed construction. Right now, two bridges span the St. Croix River and connect the two communities: the downtown Ferry Point Bridge and the smaller Milltown Bridge near the city’s industrial park.