Strait of Messina Bridge

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Satellite photo of the Strait of Messina, taken June 2002. Image courtesy of NASA.

The Strait of Messina Bridge was a planned suspension bridge that was to cross the Strait of Messina, a narrow section of water between the eastern tip of Sicily and the southern tip of mainland Italy. After years of discussion and planning that had come very close to beginning construction, the project was cancelled by the Italian government in October 2006.[1]

Construction was to begin in 2006 and was expected to be completed in 2012. If completed, it would have been the largest suspension bridge in the world. While the bridge had been planned for many decades, the idea for a bridge has been around since Roman times. A design for a restrained buoyant submarine tube tunnel, that would have been anchored to the seabed, was submitted by British engineer Alan Grant in an international competition promoted by the Italian government in 1970. This was awarded one of six equal first prizes.

Two ministers of the newly elected government of Romano Prodi (18 May 2006) stated their opposition to the project when taking up office. As of August 2006, the project was announced as "under review" for budgetary reasons. Citing concerns that the project was too expensive, was likely to enrich criminal gangs, and might not be earthquake-proof, the project was terminated in October 2006, over protests from southern Italian legislators.

The monies for the bridge will instead be applied to improving ferry service between Messina (Sicily) and the mainland at Villa San Giovanni in Calabria and hydrofoil service from Messina to Reggio di Calabria, as well as other transportation projects.

1 2006 plan
2 Controversy and concerns
3 External links
4 Further reading

[edit] 2006 plan

The 2006 plan called for a single-span suspension bridge with a central span of 3,300 m (about 2 miles). This would have made the span more than 60% longer than the Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge in Japan (the largest suspension bridge in the world at 1,991 metres).

Plans called for six traffic lanes (two driving lanes and one emergency lane in each direction), two railway tracks and two pedestrian lanes. In order to provide a minimum vertical clearance for navigation of 65 metres, the height of the two towers was to be 382.6 metres. This would have been taller than the Millau Viaduct in France (currently the tallest bridge in the world at 341 metres). The bridge's suspension system would have relied on two pairs of steel cables, each with a diameter of 1.24 metres and a total length, between the anchor blocks, of 5,300 metres.

The design included 20.3 km of road links and 19.8 km of railway links to the bridge. On the mainland, the bridge was to connect to the new stretch of the Salerno-Reggio Calabria motorway (A3) and to the planned Naples-Reggio Calabria High-Speed railway line; on the Sicilian side, to the Messina-Catania (A18) and Messina-Palermo (A20) motorways as well as the new Messina railway station (to be built by Rete Ferroviaria Italiana).

A construction consortium was chosen in 2005, with actual construction set to begin in the second half of 2006. Completion was projected to take six years, at a projected cost of € 4.6 billion.

On October 12, 2006, the Italian Parliament voted 272 to 232 in favor of scrapping the plan due to the bridge's "doubtful usefullness and viability," as well as the inability of the already burdened Italian treasury to bear its share of the cost. Additionally, transport minister Alessandro Bianchi pointed out that the road and rail links leading to the location of the proposed bridge are not capable of supporting enough traffic to make the bridge profitable. Other reasons for scrapping the plan were earthquake risk and that much of the cash would be diverted to organized crime.[2] [3]

[edit] Controversy and concerns

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There are concerns about the role of the local mafia. It is feared that organised criminals obtain a monopoly on construction contracts by intimidating competitors and bribing local officials and then overcharging for the work, generating large profits.^{[citation needed]}

Many also question the priority of the bridge, since some towns in Sicily are still without running water, and claim that the money used for the bridge would be better spent elsewhere.

There are also those who claim that the bridge would be totally unnecessary, since the local economy is already providing for the conversion of a local former NATO airport into a commercial terminal to export vegetables to northern Europe. Alternatively, a much cheaper revamping of the current structures is claimed to be sufficient (for instance, the ferry lines on the Calabria side are now accessible by trucks only by driving through very narrow streets, which are a tight bottleneck for transport).

Finally, there are concerns about the environmental impact of the bridge, its actual feasibility, and whether it could resist earthquakes, not uncommon in the region.