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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."
I am slightly surprised that this project is expected to cost at most as much, if not less, than the extected cost of seismic retrofit for the relatively shorter San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge (that project involves the construction of a completely new replacement for the eastern span of the bridge). How come? I suppose one reason is that the cost of everything in Bay Area is much much higher than in southern Italy. What about other factors? Is there something that makes the Italian design inherently cheaper to implement?
Hey, don't knock it. The Akashi Strait bridge -- which, as the article mentions, is the current record holder -- is built directly across a major fault line. They actually had a big earthquake during construction, and had to make the section in the middle a few feet longer to compensate! : S
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Yes, it's a "mafia target". Who do you think will be siphoning off a lot of the contracting money going into building it? They're not interested in blowing it up.
http://www.welton.it/davidw/
i too, being a michagamaniac, am very proud of our bridge. it doesn't seem to get the credit that is due to it. most likely this is because the bridge is in a very much "out of the way" place. i mean, you really do have to take a trip to see it, but it's got to be near the top of the list of "cool engineering tourist destinations"
i love it and used to walk it on labor day every year with my parents when i was younger and lived up up north. im a troll, so not that far up north, but still the mighty mac is a fine span to be proud of.
its total length still surpasses any suspension bridge i think, but i guess in engineering circles it is the main span that "counts". it's pretty incredible how long it held all the records; it was built in the 50s.
I am an italian guy, and I think this bridge is simple unuseful!!! It cost a lot of money to a country that have money problems, and maiby it is dangerous too! Boat exist!
Free As In Freedom
I lived in Sicily for a few years and loved riding the traghette when traveling to Calabria. Sure, it's insanely inconvenient, expensive, slow, etc., but that's what made it so much fun. Nothing like a half hour break to stand out and enjoy the sea breeze.
Some other points--
There is a fairly major fault line between Sicily and the mainland. Crossing this with a bridge, regardless of how well built it is, may not be the best idea.
It's fairly well understood that hte Mafia is involved in the ferry business. Many Sicilians believe that hte mob would never allow a bridge to be built, and I would tend to agree with them.
Burlusconi may well be making empty promises. I don't remember him being too popular in the South when I was living there.
If a bridge IS built, despite the many difficulties, it would help the economic situation in Sicily, or at the very least alleviate the high price of shipping goods there.
But if I ever make it back and they're still there, I can promise you that no matter how nice the bridge is, I'll take the ferry.
This bridge 99% likely will not be built. If this bridge stood over the straits the power of Mafia in Sicily would collapse. They couldn't keep the local population in poverty and opression by selling drinking water (under their exclusive mafia control) for hyper-inflated prices, because this bridge is planned to carry two giant aquaducts inside its deck, too.
With this bridge, Sicily would be integrated into Italy and central government and police would have much better access to the island to keep the order and uphold the law. Five years after this bridge is completed the mafia would be history! Godfathers will not allow that, they will terrorize the population so nobody dares to work on the bridge construction and importing foreign labour will drive costs up. There will be sabotage, bad concrete mixed, load-cable wires cut, improper steel used, etc.
Unless military law is imposed in Sicily and enforced with the same cruel determination as dictator mussolini did in the 1930s, the mafia will manage to halt the bridge's construction. As soon as the brdige is ready, lotsa northern cops could be moved into the island and organized crime rooted up in a normal civil manner, no need for the italian army any more.
I hope the italians will have that 1% luck and the bridge completes. It would be a tremendous GLOBAL achievement to get rid of the sicilian mafia, the capo of all mafii. The calabrians would break then and finally the US-based italian mafia could be destroyed, too. Judge Giovanni Falcone did not die in vain if this giant bridge is indeed built by 2012!
I can see the Chesapeak Bay Bridge tunnel from my bedroom and I can assure you accidents on that thing create miles of traffic.
As an aside my most unusual experience was heading in to the tunnel and noticing I was headed *under* a US Navy submarine.