The Strait of Messina Bridge[2] The Strait of Messina Bridge is a long-planned suspension across the Strait of Messina. This would connect the cities of Messina's Torre Faro with the port city of Villa San Giovanni in Calabria. 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. Bridge over the Strait of Messina, projects and numbers [click to enlarge][3]The width of the strait varies from a maximum of approximately 16 km (9.9 miles) (between Capo d'Alì in Sicily and Punta Pellaro in Calabria) to a minimum of approximately 3 km (1.9 miles) between Capo Peloro in Sicily and Torre Cavallo in Calabria. A similar distance separates Pezzo and Ganzirri. At that point, the strait is only 72 m (236 ft.) deep, while in other places it can reach 200 m (660 ft.) deep. The Strait is also characterized by strong currents. 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 program, 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 Çanakkale 1915 Bridge in Turkey. The bridge would have been part of the Berlin-Palermo railway axis (Line 1) of the Trans-European Transport Networks
2. This section extracted from Wikipedia, wikipedia.org/wiki/Strait_of_Messina_Bridge
3. corriere.it/economia/aziende/21_agosto_05/ponte-stretto-messina-progetti-numeri-che-punto-siamo-797749aa-f5b5-11eb-be09-a49ff05c6b25.shtml
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Introduction
