Italy Says it Will Build the Longest Suspension Bridge in the World. Don’t Hold Your Breath.

Italy might build the longest suspension bridge in the world. Or maybe it won’t.

Italy’s government has rekindled an idea that politicians have been discussing for 160 years: building a single-span suspension bridge between Sicily and the Italian mainland. The two-mile link across the Strait of Messina would be 50% longer than the longest suspension bridge in the world and would be held up by two towers, each taller than the top floor of the Empire State Building.

Proponents, chief among them Italian Infrastructure Minister Matteo Salvini, say it will bring jobs and economic growth to Italy’s depressed south and will be a source of national pride. But a project first imagined in the 1860s as a way to promote national unity has become a symbol of the country’s inability to turn talk into action, or at least to stop the project once and for all.

Parliament approved the plan in May. Salvini has promised to break ground by the middle of next year and have the bridge operational by the early 2030s. He has brushed off the cost concerns, saying that Italian artists Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo never had their projects subjected to a parliamentary cost-benefit analysis.

In addition to the cost, detractors cite the environmental impact, the seismic risk in a region plagued by earthquakes and the possibility that the mafia will snag some of the construction contracts. They also say money would be better spent upgrading the decrepit existing infrastructure in Sicily and Calabria, the region in the toe of the Italian boot.

Italians can be excused for thinking this is déjà vu.

In the early 1950s, the government created a company to study how to connect Sicily to the mainland. A quarter-century later, the company was still considering options, which ranged from a suspension bridge to a tunnel and a suspended underwater tube. A new government-backed company eventually settled on the suspension bridge and then in 2001 then-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi chose a contractor, but he lost re-election before work could begin and under his successor, parliament canceled the project.

Berlusconi, who died in June, tried to revive the plan in 2011 only to have it canceled once more the following year by a new government that said it was financially unsustainable while Italy faced a sovereign-debt crisis.

The estimated cost has ballooned from 5 billion euros, equivalent to $5.53 billion, at the beginning of the century to €13.5 billion now, which doesn’t include the costs for adding the necessary infrastructure to connect the bridge to existing roads. The government has been vague about where it will get the money to fund the bridge.

The infrastructure ministry declined to comment. On the day the bridge received final parliamentary approval, Salvini wrote on Twitter: “Today is a great day not only for Sicily and Calabria but for all of Italy. I’m proud of this new achievement.”

The bridge’s biggest cheerleader is a recent convert. In 2017, Salvini said the money would be better spent on more prosaic infrastructure such as improving the country’s train system. He made his point by riding the train from Trapani on Sicily’s western coast to Agrigento in the southwest of the island. It took nine hours on several trains and a bus to cover about 110 miles.

Groups that have fought the bridge for decades are mobilizing once again. Last week, Legambiente, one of Italy’s most prominent environmental activist groups, released a report called, “The Big Bluff. The Truth About the Bridge Across the Strait.”

“We need to develop an alternative to the bridge that uses technological innovations to improve existing rail transport and ferry services between the continent and Sicily,” said Giuseppe Alfieri, the chairman of Legambiente’s chapter in Sicily.

In Sicily and Calabria more than 40% of the trains still run on diesel fuel rather than electricity, which makes trains generally cleaner, faster and more reliable. The majority of train lines in Sicily and Calabria have just one track, which leads to frequent delays.

Italy isn’t alone in having one of its big infrastructure dreams on a permanent loop. Thailand has been talking for 300 years about digging a canal to connect the Pacific and Indian oceans. Over the past 150 years, the U.K. has occasionally considered linking Scotland and Northern Ireland with a bridge or tunnel, an idea that never made it past a feasibility study, in part because of the estimated cost of the bridge of £335 billion, equivalent to $429 billion

At 1,310 feet, the Messina bridge’s two towers would be a third taller than the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge. The height allows builders to avoid erecting a tower in the middle of the Messina strait, which has strong currents and plunges away quickly from the coastline.

“The length of the main span is a challenge, but it’s something engineers have solved,” said Martin Mensinger, the chair of metal structures in the school of engineering and design at Technical University of Munich who remembers his professors discussing the bridge more than 30 years ago when he was a student. “The special shape of the so-called Messina deck limits undulations due to wind-induced vibrations, and solves one of the major problems of bridges with such a long span,” he said.

While there is still no bridge over the Strait of Messina, studies done for the eventual structure produced the new Messina Type Deck, which rather than one contiguous deck has openings that allow the wind to pass and reduce the sway.

Italy’s infrastructure ministry says the bridge would be able to withstand 170 mph winds, higher than the strongest winds ever recorded in the area, and a 7.1 magnitude earthquake, equaling the force of the 1908 quake that flattened Messina. The bridge would have three lanes for traffic in each direction, two railroad lines and be about 200 feet wide. It would sit more than 200 feet above the strait, allowing large ships to pass underneath.

Webuild, an Italian general contractor that leads a consortium that held the commission to build the bridge, says it can complete the project in a little more than six years once the contract is reinstated. In April, the company’s head of engineering told a parliamentary commission that earthquake resistance would be guaranteed up to a magnitude of 7.5.  

Turkey’s 1915 Canakkale Bridge, which opened last year and is the world’s longest suspension bridge with a main central span of about 1.3 miles, was built with a Messina Type Deck.

“The Canakkale Bridge is confirmation that the design for the Strait of Messina works,” said Marco Belloli, the head of the mechanical engineering department at Milan’s Polytechnic University, who specializes in wind and did extensive wind-tunnel work to refine the design for the Messina bridge.

“One hundred years ago you wouldn’t have been able to build the Messina bridge, but methods, material and competencies have improved,” he said. “Now it’s feasible.”

Write to Eric Sylvers at [email protected]