“The goal is to make sense of this enormous expenditure with the most futuristic and I think also touristically-speaking most admired work of the century.” He said his office had received expressions of interest from construction firms around the world, but that he hoped to make it a heavily Made in Italy project.
As last envisioned, the span would have six road lanes – three in each direction, including an emergency lane – and two rail tracks. Built to withstand a magnitude 7.1-magnitude earthquake, it would have a capacity of 6,000 vehicles per hour and 200 trains per day. With anticipated rail and road improvements in the notoriously poorly serviced Calabria and Sicily that are also under way, Salvini said the bridge would halve the estimated 12-hour overland travel time to get from Rome to Messina and would actually be a net-positive for the environment because it would reduce polluting ferry traffic.
He vowed that sufficient safeguards were in place to ensure the necessary “antibodies” to rebuff Mafia infiltration in public works contracts, and that Italy now had a chance to make use of European pandemic-recovery funds to develop surrounding road and rail infrastructure.