Sicily and mainland Italy could be linked by the world’s longest suspension bridge in 2030
23.10.2024 - 12:09
/ euronews.com
/ Benito Mussolini
/ Giorgia Meloni
/ Rebecca Ann Hughes
Italy has long toyed with the idea of building a bridge between the island of Sicily with the mainland.
The hugely ambitious engineering project was in preliminary stages for decades before being shelved in 2013.
In 2022, Italy’s newly elected right-wing government announced it wanted to revive the plans for what will be the world's longest suspension bridge.
Prime minister Giorgia Meloni said she would ask the EU to help fund the multi-billion euro proposal.
This week, the bridge's construction company Società Stretto di Messina and the Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency of the European Commission (CINEA9 signed a new funding proposal.
The Grant Agreement will see the EU cover 50 per cent of the executive design costs of the rail infrastructure amounting to around €25 million.
Currently, you can go by plane, boat or a train that is carried by a ferry from mainland Italy to the island of Sicily.
However, as far back as Roman times, the idea of a bridge to connect the two land masses was debated.
In fact, according to some historians, the ancient Romans did actually build one made of barrels and boats.
Dictator Benito Mussolini revived the dream of linking Sicily with the mainland, but it wasn’t until the government of Silvio Berlusconi in the early 2000s that the scheme gained funding from Brussels.
In 2009, a contract for the construction was awarded to the Messina Strait Company.
The proposed rail and road connection was to link the Sicilian city of Messina with the region of Calabria on the mainland.
But plans were scrapped in 2013 after former premier Mario Monti closed the construction company in a series of austerity cuts.
The plans for a suspension bridge between Sicily and the mainland have not been unanimously supported.
Advocates claim the connection will help boost the island’s stagnating economy and lessen the gap between the country’s wealthy north and poorer south.
Supporters also say that it will allow cargo ships arriving down the Suez Canal to transfer their goods onto trains in Sicily.
This would then enable them to be transported quickly up to the north of the country, saving money on lengthy sea voyages.
The rail and road connection would also ease the pressure on the overcrowded ferry services that shuttle cars, lorries and trains over the Strait of Messina.
But critics maintain that the gigantic bridge would be a waste of public funds and a risky undertaking in an active seismic zone.
Environmentalists also warn of the risk to local ecosystems and the aesthetic damage to the landscape.
In her first budget as PM in 2022, Meloni reinstated the company that would oversee the construction of the Strait of Messina suspension bridge.
"This is the government and legislature that have