Italy Wants to Build The World's Longest Suspension Bridge to Sicily

Building bridges isn’t easy. It takes time, care, and dedication to truly make another person feel comfortable in your presence, to break down those barriers that so often interfere in the earliest days of new relationships. Even more difficult than that, however, is building real, actual, physical bridges. Take, for example, the Italian plans to link Sicily to the mainland — a project that’s been in the works for over 150 years.

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To link Sicily and southern Italy across the Strait of Messina, the Italian government wants to build a suspension bridge spanning just under two miles — the longest of its type in the world, by a considerable margin. Wired looked into the machinations behind the proposal, and found only a few small, lingering issues: Italian citizens don’t want it, the geological structure of the Strait of Messina complicates the engineering process, and the whole effort is wrapped up in right-wing nationalism. Besides those, though, things are going great.

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Citizens on both sides of the proposed bridge, in both Sicily and Calabria, have spoken out against it. Their reasons vary; some have an emotional attachment to the ferry that now acts as transit between the landmasses, others hold environmental concern for the birds and sea mammals of the region. Many think the project will simply be too expensive to justify.

That is, if it’s even possible. The current plan calls for a single-span suspension bridge, with no supporting pylons placed in the Strait of Messina. This alone would be a massive feat to construct, but the region’s winds make it even more difficult — they could sway such an expanse up to 16 feet side to side. Worse still is the geological movement of the region, which sends Sicily nearly 1.5 inches further from Calabria each year.

Politically, the bridge is seen in the country as a nationalist icon, proof that Italy can build the biggest, longest, most bestest bridge of them all. It’s had strong support from right-wing candidates in the region, and firm opposition from the left. This kind of ideological split, of course, is well-known for helping infrastructure projects to be completed on time and on budget.

Wired has the full story, and the investigation is worth a read. Italian officials plan to begin construction on the bridge in 2024, just one year from now. With such opposition from citizens, politicians, and the Earth itself, it’s unclear if that timeline will need to be pushed further out. My money’s on “yes.”