We could call it the goose game. On the bridge over the Strait of Messina we always return to square zero. We take a few steps forward, we say that we can continue. Then we start all over again. It serves but not in the way it was said. The last step seems more like a step backwards. The report of the working group just released by the ministry of infrastructures maintains that there are profound reasons for creating a stable crossing system of the Strait of Messina, even in the presence of the planned strengthening and redevelopment of maritime connections (dynamic link). Well we could say: after 50 years we have again understood that the bridge serves to connect Sicily to the rest of Italy within the European corridor that goes from Berlin to Palermo. For the report he dismantles the single-span bridge project that has received all possible approvals with another three-span bridge on a different layout than the current project.
This hypothesis contemplates the realization of two based antennas on the deep bottoms of the strait, resuming the studies of a solution long debated at the feasibility level, and discarded at the beginning of the 90s due to economic inefficiencies and technical and environmental problems. We could define it almost instrumental. Why was a solution that had been rejected and re-proposed without any innovative element being rescued after 30 years, indeed requiring new investigation campaigns? We could say prosaically that it serves to buy time. A way not to reject the infrastructure tout court but to fish it out by citing changes that 30 years ago were considered inadmissible.
The choice to move on a different project than the one developed from the Eurolink consortium would mean throwing away a design work and an authorization process that lasted 20 years, starting from specific studies on the single-span bridge project, which then led to the preliminary project, to an international tender for the design and construction, to the development of a definitive project, which has been reviewed, validated and approved by various international bodies and institutions. The technical-economic feasibility analysis was carried out, the environmental impact assessment also, the services conference concluded, the Cipe ok obtained in 2003, the works for moving the railway (Cannitello variant) were carried out so as to allow the construction of the pile on the Calabrian side: it would only take a decree law to revive the company Stretto di Messina spa, which was made to die overnight with the contracts stipulated and the tenders announced. Unexpected decision that holds disputes and penalties for over 700 million. It was the concessionaire, established in 1981, incorporating into more logical partners: that is, the two major contracting stations in the country – Anas and Rfi now united under the parent company Ferrovie dello Stato – and the regions of Sicily and Calabria.
On the anti-seismic seal the project had been elaborated in harmony with the Ingv, was given the go-ahead by the Superior Council of Public Works, the ok of the top experts of the Politecnico di Milano, approved by the American Parson Transportation. Extremely conservative studies have been carried out able to reassure about oscillations caused by a seismic event comparable to the one that devastated Messina in 1908, considered after years of studies the maximum possible in the area, also all the simulations of the wind tunnel have had a positive outcome: s you can also make a bridge over the Strait, as in Denmark, as in Istanbul, as in Lisbon, as in San Francisco, as in Japan, as for the access to the bay of Hong Kong.
The same ministerial working group on page 137 of the report explains the technical and temporal difficulties to consider an alternative solution to the definitive project in place: For multi-span bridges with piles in the riverbed, geophysical, geological, geotechnical and fluid dynamics surveys must be carried out. The actions and effects of sea currents, the presence of faults, submarine landslides and all types of submerged sediment accumulations that can undergo deformations, displacements, rupture, dynamic liquefaction will have to be analyzed. The investigations will have to make it possible to evaluate the mechanical behavior of the volumes of soil that influence and are influenced by the works on the ground and in the riverbed. It must also be considered that in the central parts of the Strait, in the axial zone of the graben, a cosismic subsidence greater than one meter is expected in the event of activation of faults at the edge of the Strait due to earthquakes of magnitude greater than 6.5 Richter degrees.
Well, in order not to do it, it is said that it is better to do it but starting all over again. At zero point. With a new public debate that has been going on for 50 years.