Strait of Messina Bridge
The Strait of Messina Bridge is a long-planned suspension bridge across the Strait of Messina, a narrow section of water between the eastern tip of Sicily and the southern tip of mainland Italy, specifically between north Messina's Torre Faro and Villa San Giovanni.
While the bridge has been proposed since ancient times, a detailed plan was made in the 1990s for a suspension bridge.
The project was cancelled in 2006, under Prime Minister Romano Prodi.
However, on 6 March 2009, as part of a massive new public works programme, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government announced that construction of the Messina Bridge would indeed go ahead, pledging €1.3 billion as a contribution to the bridge's total cost, estimated at €6.1 billion.
The project was cancelled again on 26 February 2013, by Prime Minister Mario Monti's government due to budget constraints.
The bridge would have been the longest suspension bridge in the world, almost doubling the main span of the Akashi Kaikyō Bridge in Japan.
The bridge would have been part of the Berlin–Palermo railway axis of the Trans-European Transport Networks.
Geography
The Strait of Messina is a funnel-shaped arm of sea that connects the Ionian Sea in the south to the Tyrrhenian Sea to the north. The width of the strait varies from a maximum of approximately to a minimum of approximately between Capo Peloro in Sicily and Torre Cavallo in Calabria. A similar distance separates Pezzo and Ganzirri; at that point, the strait is only deep, while in other places it can reach deep. It is also characterised by strong currents.History
The idea of a bridge crossing the strait is an old one. The Romans considered building a bridge joining Calabria and Sicily made of boats and barrels. Charlemagne considered joining the two sides with a series of bridges. This idea was revived by the Norman adventurer Robert Guiscard in the 11th century and by Roger II of Sicily in the 12th century. In 1876, Giuseppe Zanardelli was convinced that the strait could be linked by either a bridge or a tunnel. In 1866, public works minister Stefano Jacini gave Alfredo Cottrau, an internationally recognised engineer, the task of drawing up plans for a bridge between Calabria and Sicily. Later, in 1870, Navone proposed building a tunnel based on Napoleon's idea of a tunnel under the English Channel. This tunnel was to start at Contesse and was to pass below Messina and Ganzirri at a depth of 150 m, crossing the Strait to Punta Pezzo and resurfacing at Torre Cavallo.A geologic study of the area of the Strait of Messina was published in 1909 and in 1921, a study of an undersea tunnel was released to the Geographic Conference of Florence. A group of railway civil engineers studied the possibility of a suspension bridge but nothing came of it. The idea was revived in 1953 by master bridge builder David B. Steinman with a plan to build a bridge that crossed the Strait using two towers sunk in deep waters. The proposed span would have represented a world record, eclipsing the then-longest centre span of the Golden Gate Bridge and beating the Mackinac Straits Bridge with a total length of. The proposed structure would have cleared the sea by to allow shipping passage, and to have had two decks, the lower to carry two rail lines, and above, a road deck wide. The main cables would have been in diameter. The bridge would have required 12,000 workers and cost hundreds of billions of lire.
;Early planning stages
- In the 1960s, a wide variety of proposals were advanced, including everything from submerged tubes to floating struts, pontoons and a revolving central section of the bridge. None turned out to be realistic.
- In 1969, an international design competition was arranged.
- In the 1970s, feasibility studies were undertaken by the State Railways leading to the creation of a private company with responsibility for planning the crossing of the Strait.
- In the 1980s, the Messina Strait Company was set up with support from the State Railways, the regions and IRI. It concluded that it would be feasible to build a suspension bridge.
- Detailed plans followed in the 1990s with final approval from the High Council of Public Works.
Development of detailed plans
Plans called for four traffic lanes, two railway tracks and two pedestrian lanes. In order to provide a minimum vertical clearance for navigation of, the height of the two towers was to be. This would have been taller than the Millau Viaduct in France. The bridge's suspension system would have relied on two pairs of steel cables, each with a diameter of and a total length, between the anchor blocks, of.
The design included of road links and of railway links to the bridge. On the mainland, the bridge was to connect to the new stretch of the Salerno-Reggio Calabria motorway and to the planned Naples-Reggio Calabria High-Speed railway line; on the Sicilian side, to the Messina-Catania and Messina-Palermo motorways as well as the new Messina railway station.
The bridge was planned to connect Reggio Calabria to Messina, the two cities that face each other on either side of the strait, in order to form a single city. This ambitious urban project was called Area Metropolitana integrata dello Stretto or simply Città dello Stretto . Among the controversies surrounding the building of the bridge was strong opposition to the formation of the new city by various Sicilian nationalist groups.
On 12 October 2006, the Italian Parliament voted 272 to 232 in favour of abandoning the plan due to the bridge's "doubtful usefulness 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 abandoning the plan were earthquake risk and fears that much of the funds would be diverted to the criminal organisations Cosa Nostra and 'Ndrangheta.
Contracting parties
A construction consortium led by Impregilo was chosen in 2005, with actual construction set to begin in the second half of 2006. The bridge was designed by Danish architects at Dissing+Weitling in close collaboration with the Danish engineering firm COWI.On 27 March 2006, Impregilo and Stretto di Messina announced that they had signed a contract assigning final project planning to a General Contractor. Impregilo S.p.A., the lead partner had a 45% share. Other participants were Spain’s Sacyr, the Italian companies Società Italiana per Condotte D’Acqua S.p.A. and Cooperativa Muratori & Cementisti-C.M.C. of Ravenna, Japan’s IHI Corporation, and Consorzio Stabile A.C.I. S.c.p.a. The General Contractor would also be assisted by the Danish and Canadian companies COWI A/S, Sund & Baelt A/S and Buckland & Taylor Ltd., who would handle project engineering. Completion was projected to take six years, at a projected cost of €3.9 billion. The first task of the General Contractor was to draw up the final project.
, built in 1998 in Japan by IHI Corporation, one of the companies in charge of building the Messina Bridge.
, built in 1999 by COWI, one of the companies in charge of building the Messina Bridge.
| Function | Companies | Role |
General contractor Eurolink | Impregilo | Group leader |
| General contractor Eurolink |  IHI Infrastructure Systems Co.,Ltd. | Mandator |
| General contractor Eurolink |  COWI | Mandator |
| General contractor Eurolink |  Sacyr | Mandator |
| General contractor Eurolink | Società Italiana per Condotte d'Acqua | Mandator |
| General contractor Eurolink | Cooperativa Muratori & Cementisti | Mandator |
| General contractor Eurolink | Argo Costruzioni Infrastrutture | Mandator |
| General contractor Eurolink | Dissing+Weitling | Mandator |
| General contractor Eurolink | Sund & Bælt A/S | Mandator |
| General contractor Eurolink |  Buckland & Taylor | Mandator |
| Project management |  Parsons Corporation | |
| Environmental monitoring | Fenice | Group leader |
| Environmental monitoring | Agriconsultinng | Mandator |
| Environmental monitoring | Eurisko NOP World | Mandator |
| Environmental monitoring | Nautilus Società Cooperativa | Mandator |
| Environmental monitoring | Theolab | Mandator |
| Insurance broker | Marsh |
Later initiatives
| Year | Initiative | Notes |
| 2008 | On 15 April, Silvio Berlusconi was re-elected prime minister of Italy and vowed to restart the project to build the bridge. The following month, Altero Matteoli, Italy's minister of infrastructure and transport confirmed the government's intent to restart work on the bridge in a letter to Pietro Ciucci, the president of Società Stretto di Messina. | |
| 2009 | On 6 March, as part of a massive new public works programme, Silvio Berlusconi's government announced that plans to construct the Messina bridge had been revived, pledging €1.3 billion for the bridge as a contribution to its estimated cost of €6.1 billion. Some long and wide, the bridge would be supported by two pillars, each higher than the Empire State Building in New York. There would be two motorway lanes and one emergency lane in each direction, catering for 6,000 vehicles per hour, a double track railway for up to 200 trains a day, and two independent lanes for service traffic and pedestrians. Berlusconi claimed that work will be completed by 2016. Until 2006, when the project was halted, the work had been assigned to a consortium of Italy's Impregilo, Condotte d'Acqua, Cooperativa Muratori & Cementisti, and Consorzio Stabile A.C.I., alongside Spain's Sacyr, and Japan's Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries. | |
| 2009 | On 23 December, preparatory work started with the diversion of the Tyrrhenian railway at :it:Cannitello|Cannitello on the Italian mainland side of the strait. | |
| 2013 | In February, the project was shut down by Mario Monti, the new Italian Premier, by the government for lack of funds. | |
| 2016 | The project was reconsidered by the government of Matteo Renzi. | |
| 2019 | On 6 October, the :it:Tribunale amministrativo regionale|Tribunale amministrativo regionale postpones to 8 July 2020 the hearing for the decision on the dispute undertaken by Salini Impregilo against the Italian Government for the payment of the huge penalties for the failure to execute the Bridge as decided by the Monti Cabinet in 2013. | |
| 2020 | On 3 June, just when Italy is trying to get out of the crisis due to COVID-19 pandemic, Premier Giuseppe Conte returned to talk about Messina Bridge, declaring that the Italian government would return to evaluate the resumption of work without prejudice. |
Criticisms
Supporters see the bridge as a huge job-creation scheme and a boost for tourism. However, opponents question the priority of the bridge, claiming that if the government concentrated instead on making Sicily's roads more efficient, drivers would be able to reach the coast more quickly at a fraction of the bridge's cost.Others believe that the bridge is quite unnecessary, since the local economy is already providing for the conversion of the local former NATO airport in Comiso into a commercial terminal to export vegetables to Northern Europe. Alternatively, a much cheaper revamping of the current structures is claimed to be sufficient. Another argument against the bridge is the poor state of the transport infrastructure in Sicily, particularly the railroad and the A20 autostrada linking Messina to Palermo, and the poor state of the A3 autostrada on the mainland linking Reggio Calabria to Naples.
The greatest structural design problem of the bridge itself is the aerodynamic stability of its deck under wind and seismic activity. There are also concerns about the environmental impact of the bridge, its actual feasibility, and its resistance to earthquakes, common in this region.