Messina bridge work to start by summer says Salvini

(ANSA) - ROME, APR 17 - 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". (ANSA).