«The Bridge is a large area planning work included in the European port, airport, rail, road and interport transport system. It follows that the primary impact of the work, in addition to the connection of the secondary mobility system (state, provincial and urban roads) is represented by the railway system and the two motorway networks Messina-Palermo and Messina-Catania”.
The architect’s reflection starts from the general scenario. Dario La Fauci, president of the Urban Planning Commission of the Municipality of Messina, spoke at the debate held at Palazzo Zanca on the topic “The revolution of the Bridge: how the city will change”.
Fauci, however, then goes into the merits and does not spare her critical contribution: «On the basis of this vision it cannot be denied that the studies linking the Bridge infrastructure with the intermodal transport system have been lacking, the development vectors and the actions to be undertaken are approximate. An accurate review at all institutional levels and territorial planning capable of dealing with the international value of the work would be useful. Without polemical intent, we invite you to reconsider current assessments to project yourself forward and correlate the local reality with the future international intermodal transport system”.
And also worth highlighting is the intervention of the founder of the Civic Network for infrastructures in the South, Eng. Giovanni Mollica: «The relationship between a large public work and the territory is divided into two lines: the institutional one (under the jurisdiction of the mayor) and that inherent to the local productive fabric. The actual growth of the Strait Area in the next 8-10 years depends on the second.
An example: if a consortium of 20 city laundries were awarded the contract to wash only the work overalls of the workers during the eight years of the works, a summary evaluation of the growth of the single annual turnover would reach 20-30 thousand euros. If, however, the service is carried out in house, only waste water reaches the territory. The same goes for meals, accommodation, surveillance, supplies of materials and so on. Hundreds of millions who can stop over the Strait Area or fly over it to go elsewhere.
On the “Femernlink”, an infrastructure of comparable size to the Bridge, the Agency created ad hoc by the Municipality of Lolland (60 thousand inhabitants) ensured that the large tunnel module factory was created on the Danish side of the Baltic Sea, to boost the local economy and employment. One wonders: will the modules of the bridge deck also be made, assembled and stored in Sicily and Calabria? How many Sicilian and Calabrian companies will participate in the contracts for the Bridge over the Strait of Messina?
In short, there is a critical front even among those “very in favor” of the great work. At the same time, the “Stretto” and the Eurolink Consortium, led by Webuild, reiterate that the main planned interventions do not concern the stable connection but all the works planned in the territories. A point of view that is summarized by the Italpress news agency: «For decades the Strait Bridge has been imagined as an absolute engineering gesture, an arch suspended in the void, a 3,300 meter long steel record, an undertaking that will change the geography of the Mediterranean forever. Yet, the most surprising truth is that this epic span, despite being the symbolic heart of the project, represents only a part of the overall investment. The Bridge alone is worth around 5.2 billion euros, equal to just under 40% of the 13.5 billion foreseen by national planning. The most extensive, structured and demanding part of the project is another, namely a “submerged continent”, an infrastructure within the infrastructure that sets up a new mobility for the South. On this continent there are roads, railways, stations, tunnels, viaducts, access systems, environmental works, parks, hydraulic redevelopments, interventions on rivers, quarry recovery and urban redesigns. There are over 4.1 billion euros of connections and ancillary works, designed to integrate Sicily and Calabria into the great European Scandinavian-Mediterranean Corridor and to transform the Strait area into a continental hub. It is precisely this system of highly complex and innovative infrastructures that makes the Bridge itself possible, the final emergence of a “submerged continent” that will redesign territories, mobility, economies, lifestyles.”
The Strait Area will be «the beating heart of the “submerged continent”, where 75% of the overall value of the connection works is concentrated. And «despite widespread beliefs, the project that aims to re-emerge the hidden continent is not only made of steel and tunnels, but also of environmental and landscape works. A substantial part of the excavated materials from the construction sites will be reused for embankments, environmental recovery, and coastal nourishment works; overall, over 400,000 m² of urban parks will be created.
In essence, the “Submerged Continent” is not an addition to the Bridge, it is what allows the Bridge to function. It is a system that serves over 400,000 inhabitants of the Strait area, which puts Sicily in continuity with the rest of Italy without interrupting the railway network.”