Premier Matteo Renzi said
Thursday that a bridge across the Strait of Messina to connect
Sicily with mainland Italy will be built eventually, but not
before the local infrastructure is ready for it. "The bridge
over the Strait will definitely be built sooner or later," Renzi
told Isoradio. "The important thing is that first we bring home
results on incomplete works because there isn't anyone here who
is thinking of delivering projects worthy of the Pharaohs". He
said that the bridge would have to be capable of carrying
high-speed trains as well as road traffic. "It will be necessary
to work out the costs and time spans but that's not possible at
the moment because work on the roads of Sicily and Calabria must
be finished first," he said, adding that highways in some areas
were "indecent". The seemingly moribund bridge project, a former
hobby horse of ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi, returned to the
fore in October when the junior government partner, the New
Centre Right, passed a motion calling for a reassessment of the
feasibility of the bridge for rail traffic only.
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