Because the bridge over the Strait of Messina is necessary
The speech by Massimo Ruspandini, group leader in the Transport Commission in the Senate and national head of the Transport Department of Fratelli d'Italia, and Marco Carmine Foti, national manager of the Transport Department of Fratelli d'Italia
Let's start from the origins. The first project of the work was born in 1866 when the then Minister of Public Works Jacini commissioned the engineer Cottrau to study a bridge solution between Calabria and Sicily. The transport studies were carried out over the years as well as the economic evaluation and the engineering project of the work. The latest studies date back to the beginning of 2000, which certainly need an update, but the base, or the technical – infrastructural project of the work is already available and, we add, with very interesting data.
In recent years, various positions have taken place within central institutions. How can we forget the solutions proposed by the Conte 1 and 2 Governments through the construction of leaning and / or suspended tunnels, or with a multi-span bridge on which a cycle path is also foreseen. We leave any kind of comment to the readers. This work is an intervention on which it is not acceptable to joke and make fun of the many citizens who live in the two southern regions or the millions of tourists who annually visit the beautiful territories of Sicily and Calabria.
We want to recall a geological-geophysical study, conducted with the oceanographic vessel Urania in 2010 by a highly qualified research group, published in Scientific Reports, which highlighted how the Strait of Messina region is affected by a complex system of faults. where over short distances, different tectonic regimes (extensional, transcurrent and compressive) coexist. Therefore, in short, solutions other than the single-span bridge do not find possible applications and appear very difficult to realize.
But MIMS is not of this opinion. The working group appointed by the current Minister Giovannini, the documents read, "on the basis of a series of considerations, believes that the multi-span aerial solution is potentially cheaper than the single span one", of which, we would like to remind you once more time, there is the project made by the best of professionals. However, we have shown you that this solution is absolutely not feasible due to the serious problems found in the depths of the Strait of Messina.
From the documents we note that the MIMS judges the single-span solution even unfavorable and this aspect is truly paradoxical.
Let's try to explain the position of the MIMS. According to Minister Giovannini "an unfavorable aspect of this solution is certainly the constraint of its location in the point of minimum distance between Sicily and Calabria (about 3 km), which distances the crossing from the centers of gravity of the metropolitan areas of Messina and Reggio Calabria, but which at the same time involves the need to build a suspension bridge with a span greater than 50% of that of the longest bridge built to date in the world ".
We allow ourselves to translate into a simpler language: since there is not an example in the world that can make a comparison, the working group believes that the design solution proposed (single-span) in recent decades is not feasible. The working group identified by Minister Giovannini also adds that the design of the bridge is far from the center of gravity of the two metropolitan cities, forgetting, however, that it (the bridge) is located within an integrated area specifically defined as "metropolitan of the Strait" and the bridge is positioned just barycentric to it.
Meanwhile, the Government has entrusted RFI with a new feasibility project. The Infrastructure Annex to the DEF 2022 explicitly states that «RFI must provide, through a public tender procedure and use the funds provided for this purpose by budget law no. 178/2020 (50 million €) to the drafting of the technical-economic feasibility project of alternative solutions for the stable crossing system of the Strait of Messina ".
A new feasibility project that RFI will have to carry out on the basis of in-depth analyzes on about twenty points highlighted by MIMS, among which the studies to be carried out on good international practices, transport criticalities, technically plausible design proposals for two types of bridge stand out (single span and multiple span), seismic risk, deck response to turbulent wind (through aerodynamic and aeroelastic studies), construction times and costs, environmental impacts.
In short, a pharaonic project, a duplication of the existing one, which will only delay and postpone the decisions regarding the solution to be adopted for the stable crossing of the Strait of Messina. But the time for this government is up.
So the conclusions that can be drawn are the following. Before going into the merits of our positions, let us highlight an interesting aspect: "MIMS still believes that there are profound reasons for creating a stable crossing system of the Strait of Messina, even in the presence of the planned strengthening / redevelopment of maritime connections (dynamic link ), although necessary in relation to the times for the creation of a stable connection ".
Therefore, even from the technical side of the Ministry, there is an awareness of the need for this work. Projects, studies, analyzes and evaluations are already in the possession of the Ministry, they have been carried out in abundance over time.
In our opinion, carrying out another study (with a cost of 50 million euros) means definitively burying the construction of an infrastructure that today more than ever needs a territory literally "detached" from the Continent and the TEN-T Corridors and wasting public money which can and must be invested in other important works, such as, for example, the continuation of high speed up to Reggio Calabria.
The bridge over the Strait of Messina will be built, this is our position, as it is the logical continuation of the strategic works in continuity and consistency with the national programming, which will have to be revised with the modification of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan and the National Plan Complementary.
Only with the construction of the bridge will it be possible to contribute to the development of the European "core" and "comprehensive" network, connecting the Sicilian territory with the rest of the country in an effective, efficient and sustainable manner. The bridge over the Strait of Messina will be the link with all of Europe and with international traffic in the Mediterranean, completing a trans-European infrastructure that starts from the Baltic and ends in Palermo.
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priority will be the highest and placed at the center of the Government agenda, interacting and setting our conditions (essentiality and territorial continuity) in the European Commission.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/smartcity/ponte-stretto-messina-necessario/ on Mon, 08 Aug 2022 05:08:58 +0000.