Sicily to finally get bridge to mainland Italy

The Italian government on Wednesday approved a €13.5 billion project to build the world’s longest suspension bridge connecting the island of Sicily to the mainland.

The bridge will have two railway lines in the middle and three lanes of traffic on either side. It will connect Messina in Sicily with the southern Italian region of Calabria.

The bridge will have a suspended span of 3.3km—a world record—that will stretch between two towers of 400m in height. It will span the Strait of Messina.

The bridge has been long coming with the first plans mooted around 50 years ago. A project that was set to kick off in 2006 was eventually abandoned because of the European debt crisis two years later.

Plans were revived after the last election with Transport and Infrastructure Minister Matteo Salvini making it one of his targets.

A ministerial committee on Wednesday gave the green light to the state-funded bridge, which is expected to be completed by 2032.

“It will be the longest single-span bridge in the world and would act as a development accelerator for the south,” Salvini said during a press conference.

He said trains today take between 120 minutes and 180 minutes to transport cargo across the strait on board specialised ferries but with the bridge they will take just 15 minutes. Salvini added that the average time for cars to cross the strait will go down to 10 minutes from an average of between 70 minutes and 100 minutes.

The bridge has been designed to withstand high winds and earthquakes in a region that lies across two tectonic plates.

The Italian government hopes the bridge will bring economic growth and jobs to two of the poorest regions.

Critics of the bridge question its environmental impact and the high cost, while cynics point to a long history of public works projects that were announced but never completed in Italy.

The Meloni government wants to classify the cost of the bridge as defence spending since it would serve to connect Sicily, where there is a NATO base, with the mainland.