This is the viaduct on the road from Palermo Agrigento. Famous in Italy for being inaugurated on 23 December 2014 and collapsing a week later on 30 December 2014. A host of people were indicted for being crap at their jobs – among them Mr Piero Ciucci, the head of Anas, who allowed the viaduct to open without being checked and signed off. The prosecutors have asked for 4 years of prison for Mr Ciucci. Instead, because this is Italy, Ciucci is now the head honcho of the society for the bridge over the strait of Messina. Not a promising start.
Last week Salvini had various press conferences telling us all how marvellous this bridge will be and it will open in 2033 (or 4 or 5) and cost a mere 13.5 billion euros. For those of us who live here and have never seen a project completed on time, we can confidently say that it may be partially open in 2040/2045 and the cost will be 20 billion at least.
There’s a further complication and Ill stick my head above the parapet and just say it. This bridge will never carry trains. It seems that all the railway bridge experts in the world, except the one that is employed by the Messina bridge company, say that it’s impossible. Not only will the Messina bridge be more than twice the length of any existing railway bridge in the world, there are many fascinating videos on youtube showing the stresses and strains a bridge suffers with a 1500 ton machine going from one end to the other; the flexing, the horizontal stress, what happens if its windy and so forth. Also there are studies which show that a fully laden bridge will need a 6 metre vertical flexibility, which will make it too low for certain container ships and cruise liners to pass under it, which sort of defeats the idea of a bridge.
Add to this the problem of a highly active fault line under the strait and the fact that Sicily and Calabria are moving apart, albeit very slowly, I can predict with confidence that as the project moves along, and more and more cement is mixed to the advantage of certain crime families, the ambition will be substantially scaled back. It is quite possible that we will end up with a landscape excavated and prepared for tunnels, roads and pylons which ends up being just a permanent scar as a tribute to the stupidity of Salvini.