Italy To Build World's Longest Suspension Bridge

Rei writes "According to the BBC, Italy has just granted contracts to begin work on the world's longest suspension bridge, connecting the island of Sicily to the mainland. The nearly four kilometer-long bridge across the Messina Straits is to carry a double six-lane highway and four high-speed railway tracks. Its main span will be 3.3 kilometers long; this would over 1.5x the current record-holder, the 1991-meter Akashi-Kaikyo bridge."

Comments

Re:Is that Prudent?

[deglr6328]

why would it cause "havoc"? Surely it will be heavily monitored live by camera and other methods. It's going to be a double six-lane highway!! There's no reason one of the lanes couldn't be reserved for emergency traffic. Also, it's only 2.5 miles long. Huge for a bridge but nothing special otherwise. You could therefore reach any point on the bridge in about a minute. I have to say I'm not seeing any show-stoppers here.

election campaign

[Anonymous Coward]

It's election time again in Italy and Berlusconi needs the votes of Sicilies citizens.
So he pulls out the old bridge plans like he did the last time and the time before.
Don't expect to travel to Sicily on try feet too soon.

Re:Is that Prudent?

[bedroll]

There are plenty of bridges that are longer than that and they serve their purpose well. This is just the longest suspension bridge. I've personally used the 23-mile bridge-tunnel across the Chesapeake Bay. Also consider the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, it's 23 miles all above water. Neither of them are as wide as this bridge is proposed to be, either.

Re:Critical Failure

[pyro_peter_911]

Given its length, and the presumably large number of people that could be on it at a time, I presume it would be a potential target for terrorists or organized crime (hey, it's Sicily...) based on past threats against bridges and tunnels by terrorist groups.

How would they prevent against this? It seems such a bridge has two critical failure points at both ends and one or more in the middle.

I know they have water to cross, so its size doesn't appear to be the motivation, as say for the tallest building etc. but I think these are issues which (sadly) need to be considered.

Jesus Christ on a pogo stick! Can we even mention constructing a structure larger than a Taco Bell without someone saying "Well, that's a nice idea, but The Terrorists could just blow it up." Here's a whack from The Reality Stick for you. The Terrorists can (and will) Blow Stuff Up. They're generally going to do it where there are a lot of people in order to maximize Body Count (aka Terror). Fortunately, for The Terrorists, the world is a target rich environment because for the past 10,000 years people have not advanced "Well, that's a nice idea, but The Terrorists could just blow it up" as a credible reason to abandon major projects. A new world's longest bridge or World's Blankest Blank will be yet another target and life will go on.

Now, I'm not advancing this bridge as a good idea. There may be, and probably are, many legitimate reasons why it should be built differently or even not at all. However, suggesting that every new structure should be terrorist proof is delusional.

Peter

Re:Cost vs Bay Bridge retrofit

[dbIII]

What about other factors? Is there something that makes the Italian design inherently cheaper to implement?

Different constraints - the portion of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge has to fit with the rest of it and the bridge will presumably be in use while construction is going on. The Italy-Sicily bridge just has to cover the distance, doesn't have to fit to a pre-existing design and doesn't have to be used until it's finished.

In a lot of places you will see bridges built next to each other - sometimes it's cheaper to build a whole new bridge instead of tacking another bit on the side.

The cost of stuff in the Bay area are most likely irrelevant to the project, since stuff will come in from elsewhere.

With a BIG grain of salt...

[mano78]

Please be aware that this is a plan that's been around for more than twenty years now, and it's not feasible. The wind is just too strong (been there last month, I saw it), the zone is a sismic one and generally noone cares anyway, because the roads that would bring people to the bridge (the infamous Salerno-Reggio Calabria) are ancient to be kind and generally a wreck.

Be also aware that this is election time, and our prime citizen Berlusconi will lose. So he bring out this old project, to gain some thousands of votes, and will leave it to the next administration to realize. Same old story...

(see the Mose project to protect Venice from floodings)

Re:Cost vs Bay Bridge retrofit

[TeXMaster]

Other factors are:

• eveything in Italy is cheaper than in the USA (about half, although the gap is diminishing)
• in the South, this is especially more true
• local labour
• cheating: with this I mean that the prospected cost will grow much higher as time goes by; since Berlusconi is likely to lose the next elections and who knows, probably the ones after those too, it'll be the left-wing parties that'll have to dig for that money, or stop the works; all the best for Mr. B
• contrary to the use in most civilized nations (Italy included) the private company that builds it will not be held responsible for defects; this means that if the bridge collapses (wanna bet?) the State will be held liable, not the company that's building it

Re:Is that Prudent?

[night_it]

Surely it will be heavily monitored live by camera and other methods. It's going to be a double six-lane highway!! There's no reason one of the lanes couldn't be reserved for emergency traffic. Also, it's only 2.5 miles long. Huge for a bridge but nothing special otherwise. You could therefore reach any point on the bridge in about a minute. I have to say I'm not seeing any show-stoppers here.

Ok guy, you weren't born in Sicily..