Daily Times

MILAN: Italy is ready to revive controversial plans to build a bridge to Sicily, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said on Tuesday, challenging the main firm behind it to unfreeze the project.

The plans for a bridge across the Strait of Messina – the narrow strip of water between Sicily and the southern tip of mainland Italy – were shelved in 2011 under then premier Silvio Berlusconi. Renzi said that the project would create 100,000 jobs, reduce the region’s isolation and “complete the link between Naples and Palermo.”

“I challenge you, if you are in a position… to unfreeze what has been frozen for 10 years, we are ready,” he told the head of construction conglomerate Salini Impregilo, Pietro Salini, at a celebration in Milan for the firm’s 110th anniversary.

Salini replied, “We are always ready,” adding that if work started tomorrow the bridge could be built in six years. “The problem is not technical, it is political, bureaucratic and financial in nature… We have to find a way to lessen the impact of the cost on state coffers.” Salini said his company would restart discussions with Italian railway company Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane and Italy’s highway agency ANAS, which are its main partners in the project.

He recalled that the project was already under concession to a consortium in which Salini Impregilo has a 40 per cent share. Berlusconi initially backed the project in 2001, but his centre-left successor Romano Prodi scrapped it in 2006. Previous plans for the road, rail and pedestrian bridge are based on it being nearly 3.7 kilometres (2.3 miles) long and rising 64 metres (210 feet) above the sea.

In October 2011, Italy’s parliament decided in agreement with the Berlusconi government to end funding for the controversial project which had an estimated cost of 6 million euros ($6.7 million) at the time.