MESSINA, Italy (CN) — Can a nature-defying bridge across the Strait of Messina solve one of Italy's oldest, most basic and seemingly intractable problems: The stagnation and poverty of its southern regions?
The divide between wealthy northern Italy and the poorest lands south of Rome – collectively known as the Mezzogiorno – has been the subject of debate ever since Italy was unified in the 1860s. It's even a branch of study known as “the Southern Question.”
Instead of narrowing, the gap continues to grow and a sense of endless frustration and futility hangs over places like Messina, an ancient port city that gives the strait its name.
Messina is like so many other places in Italy's deep south: Layered with history, broken by modernity, deeply scarred by natural and manmade catastrophes, fiercely proud, incomprehensibly poor, full of life and full of cracked concrete and decrepit structures.
Messina knows about the problems that can come with big concrete projects, as is being contemplated with the bridge.
For example, the autostrada – Italy's equivalent to an interstate highway – that runs through the city has been interrupted for months due to ongoing work to repair crumbling concrete spans that scamper between mountain flanks hovering behind the city. It's an ominous reminder that if a huge bridge across the Strait of Messina is built it too could become a maintenance nightmare.
Since at least the 1950s, national politicians in Rome have linked improving the fortunes of the South with the idea of building a bridge across the strait that divides Sicily from the mainland.
A bridge, its backers say, would finally bring Sicily, the Mezzogiorno's largest and most populous region with 5 million people, into the modern age and position the Mediterranean's biggest island once again at the center of European trade routes.
A bridge also complements a long-term priority for the European Union to get goods moving faster between Sicily's ports and northern Europe.
As it is, cars, trucks, trains, goods and passengers are taken across the strait by a non-stop flotilla of boats and ferries, but this inevitably leads to delays and at the worst of times, such as during the busy summer months, the 30-minute ferry transit can take up to two hours or more.
The big picture idea is that if a bridge is built then the disgorging of container ships coming through the Suez Canal from Asia could take place in Sicily rather than in the ports of northern Europe. High-speed trains would then move the cargo across the Messina bridge to the rest of Europe.
In September, the Italian government relaunched the possibility of erecting a bridge to cross the Messina strait at its narrowest point, a 1.9-mile stretch between Calabria and Sicily. A committee is expected to make a recommendation this spring on its feasibility.
According to many scientists and engineers, it would be one of the world's most complicated and impressive bridges ever built.
But Sicilians aren't holding their breath about ever seeing it constructed.
Over the decades, Italy has spent about 900 million euros (roughly $1 billion) on engineering studies and engaged in years of rancorous debate over it to the point that the bridge has become known as the “ponte della discordia” and “ponte dei sospiri” – the “bridge of discord” and the “bridge of sighs.”
Today, it seems as elusive as ever. Bring up the bridge idea and Sicilians on both sides of the debate throw up their hands.
Bridge supporters despair because decades of stagnation have compelled Sicily's brightest to depart for jobs in northern Italy or outside the country altogether; all the while, the island's industries languish. They argue a bridge could only help the island turn around its fortunes.