Italy’s Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has said he wants to build the long-planned but now canceled bridge from Reggio in Calabria to Messina in Sicily, but critics think it’s either impossible or a bad idea.
The bridge has been a long time dream for some; serious planning began in the 1960s, and the design shown above was proposed in the 1990s. In 2013, the “technocrat” government of Mario Monti abandoned it as impractical to build at the time.
The bridge, with a construction estimate of over 9 billion Euros, would include a central span of over 3.3 km, and would be the world’s longest suspension bridge.
But the opposition is not all based on cost. Opponents have raised questions of environmental effects, regional jealousies are involved, and the effect on jobs, including those of the workers currently running the ferries that link Sicily to the mainland. For a fuller story in thelocal.it, click HERE
I like it when people take on huge tasks and succeed at them. The American Space Program was like that — expensive, risky, exciting and one of man kind’s greatest achievements.
This bridge would be a great engineering triump. And I think it would be important to link Sicily more closely to Italy. It would make the island much more accessible and allow freer flow of people. 9 billion Euros is a lot of money, but is probably comparable to the debt the US government runs up in a few days, so from that perspective, it seems not so daunting.