Bridge over the Strait: one step forward and two steps back

The bridge over the Strait of Messina is useful and it would be good to do it. However compared to the project already studied for over twenty years by the company for the Strait which envisaged a single span of over three kilometres, it would be good to study a new project with three spans, ie with pylons planted deep into the sea. In short, with this proposal there is the risk of starting over, spending more money on planning and in the end postponing the construction of the work to who knows when, perhaps never.

It was delivered to Parliament in recent days the final report of the Technical Commission wanted by the former minister of public works Paola De Micheli and adopted by the current minister Enrico Giovannini who did not want to take any decision on the matter and limited himself to transferring everything to Parliament in order to continue a debate started forty years ago and which without the assumption of a precise and courageous political commitment by the Government, seems destined to never end.

And in any case it is a broad report with many aspects of great interest. In the first place it is made clear that the bridge is needed. That would be good for the Sicilian economy and for all of Southern Italy in general. Also not to be overlooked is the symbolic aspect of a great work which, as happened in other places in the world, appears destined to change the global perception not only of Sicily but of our entire country which would be accepted in the club of technologically advanced countries. In fact, it is a public work intended to make the whole world understand that Italy, after thirty years of withdrawing into itself, decided to face modernity, to play on equal terms with all the more advanced countries.

Also the fact of having conceived a single span of over 3 km which would be the longest in the world, far from representing a risk, as the drafters of the technical report say, it could be our strong point, to show the world the excellence of our engineering and our ability to improve materials technologies and construction techniques. The positive thing is that the improvident idea launched by former Prime Minister Conte to build a tunnel is in fact completely shelved. It is in fact a hypothesis already examined years ago and rejected not only for the seismic risk but also for other construction difficulties, such as for example the overcoming of the slopes between the two banks (Calabrian and Sicilian) which would require a very long tunnel.

The criticisms advanced by the commission to the single span bridge, moreover, do not seem to be of great depth. It is the distance (about 3 km) from the two cities of Messina and Reggio which does not seem a great disadvantage, indeed it might not be a negative to move transit traffic away from the cities. Secondly, the visual impact of the high pylons built on dry land from which the steel cables supporting the bridge depart is criticized. Even in San Francisco the Golden Gate has a strong visual impact, but it is also the symbol of the Californian city!

What raises more concern it is the idea of ​​restarting the design of a new type of bridge with all that follows, such as, for example, the laying of pylons in the sea in a point with a high seismic risk. Indeed, for this new design idea one wonders a new allocation of 50 million, while the procedural iter and above all the times within which a definitive decision will have to be taken are not fixed.

Basically this looks like a maneuver aimed at postponing again and for who knows how long, a decision on a work judged by the same commission of experts as useful and indeed appropriate, albeit with an update of the studies on the economic impact in the territories most interested in the work.

Finally, as regards financing, the commission is in favor of a financial intervention entirely paid by the State since private individuals would need to set very high tariffs in order to be able to return from their investments. Given the large availability of public money that exists today also thanks to European funds, the problem of private participation does not seem so much of a financial nature as of efficiency, in the sense of having a subject interested in scrupulously examining the costs for avoid waste e an uncontrolled rise in expenses.