Work on the Messina Bridge linking
Sicily to mainland Italy will start this summer, Transport and
Infrastructure Minister Matteo Salvini said Wednesday after the
environment ministry on Tuesday asked the contracting company to
explain 239 parts of the project.
Salvini has pushed strongly for the construction of what
will be the world's longest suspension bridge, a project mooted
by successive centre-right governments but never actually
started due to environmental, mafia infiltration and seismic
concerns and the significant cost.
The bridge currently has a price tag of some 14.6 billion euro
($16.14 billion), or about one percent of Italian GDP, and is
scheduled to come into use in the late 2030s.
"I'm going straight ahead and I'm counting on the Stretto di
Messina company to provide answers to all the observations made
by the other ministries within 30 days: the objective, I
reiterate, is to arrive at the start of work by the summer of
2024.," said Salvini at an initiative on public contracts,
organised by Confcooperative Lavoro e Servizi.
"I am counting on Italy to be a model of development and growth
and engineering".
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