The new $6.4 billion Gordie Howe International Bridge reached its biggest milestone yet this summer, when U.S. and Canadian construction crews linked the two halves of the bridge in a celebration high above the Detroit River.

Now that the two sides are connected, the new border crossing stands as the longest clear span of any cable-stayed bridge in North America, with a jaw-dropping length of 853 metres or 0.53 miles.

Once completed in 2025, the bridge will close a gap in the continent's busiest international trucking corridor and link Ontario's Highway 401 to Michigan's I-75.

📷 Work on the #GordieHoweBridge project continues. Here is a new gallery featuring the bridge. Now that the connection is in place and all cables installed, the team will work to re-stress the stay cables: https://t.co/JRXqae8N81 🇨🇦 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/daimBLFXYE

— Gordie Howe International Bridge (@GordieHoweBrg) July 9, 2024

But there's plenty more work to do before traffic can flow over the bridge.

The bridge halves' connection may have been the most exciting milestone to date, but visuals of the monumental infrastructure feat are only growing more impressive as construction progresses.

The bridge team has released a new gallery showing the bridge from various angles, looking closer to the impressive preconstruction renderings by the day.

With the big connection now complete and the project's six-year anniversary of its June 2018 construction start passed, attention is turning to the next key moment in the bridge's saga: the building of connecting infrastructure.

On the Ontario side of the bridge, massive new highway ramps are filling in the final stretches of Highway 401 to the bridge's approach.

These ramps may seem like any other, but the connection between the 401 and I-75 will expand one of the continent's longest highways into a ming-bogglingly-long, almost totally continuous route.

This bridge connects I-75 (which spans from the Sault Ste. Marie International Bridge on the Canadian border all the way south to Miami, Florida) with not just the 828-kilometre-long Highway 401, but also a 597-kilometre stretch of Quebec's Autoroute 20.

Together, you could drive a staggering distance of over 3,500 kilometres (requiring over 30 hours of driving time) between Trois-Pistoles, Quebec and Miami, Florida — with almost zero navigation required to jump from highway to highway to highway.

This newly connected international network of highways means that, when this bridge is done, you'll be able to drive from Ontario to Detroit, Cincinnati, Atlanta, Orlando and Miami without ever having to worry about missing your exit.