Govt to mull 'reconsidering Messina Bridge project'

(ANSA) - Rome, September 29 - The government is willing to mull whether to reconsider the long-moribund Messina Straits bridge project from the standpoint of rail infrastructure, Transport and Infrastructure Undersecretary Umberto Del Basso De Caro told parliament Tuesday.
    He said the government might "weigh the usefulness of reconsidering the Strait Bridge project as a piece of rail infrastructure via an assessment and rigorous analysis of the cost-benefit ratio, as a possible element of a strategy of bolstering southern Italy's infrastructure system".
    Transport and Infrastructure Minister Graziano Delrio said he was not yet aware of the possible revival of the hugely ambitious and expensive project.
    "There is no portfolio about the bridge on my desk but we will weigh proposals if they come," he said.
    There has been barely any talk of reviving the project for more than two years.
    In May 2013 Italy's highway system chief said European plans for the Helsinki-Valletta corridor required the resuscitation of the nearly dead mega-project.
    "The Helsinki-Valletta corridor appears little plausible without a road connection from Naples onward," wrote Pietro Ciucci, CEO of Italy's state-controlled highway infrastructure firm ANAS.
    Ciucci observed that the European Union does not specify "how to connect Calabria to Sicily, and thus remains the necessity of a bridge across the Strait: rail, but also road".
    At the time, then industry minister Flavio Zanonato said building a bridge across the Strait of Messina to connect mainland Italy to Sicily, an erstwhile dream of former premier Silvio Berlusconi, was not a priority for Enrico Letta's new government given the current economic climate.
    Zanonato said that while the bridge was an interesting project, it "is absolutely not a priority for Italy".
    The idea of building a bridge to link the island of Sicily to the Italian peninsula goes back to Roman times, but modern engineering and planning took shape in the 1950s and 1960s.
    But it was Berlusconi who championed actually undertaking the massively ambitious 8.5-billion-euro suspension bridge.
    In 2012 the technocrat government of former premier Mario Monti, who replaced Berlusconi during a peak in the euro crisis in November 2011, decided not to cancel the controversial bridge project but to extend feasibility tests for another two years.
    Supporters say the bridge would create jobs and boost Italy's image while bringing Sicily closer to the mainland.
    But the bridge has been opposed by environmentalists and dogged by concerns over safety and the potential involvement of the Mafia.
    According to the plans, the 3,690-metre-long bridge is designed to handle 4,500 cars and hour and 200 trains a day.