The "mega bridge" is one of the most politicized and polarizing projects I've ever seen in my life.
My family lived in Messina for a while and it seems that in the last 100 years no one was actually interested in building nor genuinely stopping the project for good, just using it to bash whoever is on the opposite side of the argument.
- On the left it's seen as the biggest ecological issue they have in Italy, despite the ferry company handling the passage is a well known mafia-owned monopoly whose ferries leak tons of garbage and oil on the sea every single day.
- On the right they've gone with the most ridiculous, expensive and unachievable version of a project in order to to make sure they can siphon as much money as they can before declaring that the project has to be stopped or whatever.
Every summer I go back to my mother's family and when the topic comes out it's as they're basically stuck in a time loop.
Prince Edward Island had a century-old plan that was finally executed in the 1990s to build a bridge to connect to mainland Canada (1).
This is the same debate that happens each time there’s a fixed connection to an island until the damn thing opens and people grow to love it.
It’s a pain in the arse to have to wait for the ferry, to sync your travel plans to ferry times, only to have to change plans again when the ferries break down.
(1) https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/pei-isla...
Having lived the majority of my adult life in greater Puget Sound, the ferries are great for tourists and a pain for actual day-to-day travel.
It's not just that bridge, it seems it's almost any big new bridge that attracts all sorts of howling, even when it's painfully obvious it's needed.
Skye. Never used the bridge, used the ferry from Kyle of Localsh to Kyleakin and the one to Mallaig from Armadale. But what you say rings true. Romance went out the window, but for locals its a shitload easier to get on with life.
> when the topic comes out it's as they're basically stuck in a time loop.
Fellow Italian here. The whole country is stuck in a time loop. Have you noticed that even the crime pages of the newspapers are filled with articles about investigations on murders of twenty or thirty or even forty years ago? And that on tv, people debate furiously terrorist acts that took place almost 50 years ago- when they also don't get updates from eternally ongoing investigations and trials? In politics, the same reforms that were proposed at the beginning of the '90s are brought up by each new government, generating new controversy and division, until they're forgotten or, sometimes, rolled back by Italy's supreme court. These days there's even a debate going on about the opportunity of introducing sexual education in schools for 6-8 graders, when I remember we had it already in the late '80s.
It's quite interesting for southern Italians to claim that a bridge will be detrimental to the ecology of the region, when in Sicily people routinely burn their trash on the street because the mafia controls the garbage disposal apparently.
2025. In Europe. They burn. Their trash. On the street.
Huh interesting. I overheard a conversation in a bar around Kabukicho, Shinjuku, Tokyo a few years ago with similar story.
The bartender was talkingto a local bar owner, and he was explaining how he was trying to find another contractor for garbage disposal because he found the current rate ridiculous. Every contractor hung up on him after hearing his address, and he found out that yakuza had territories around Kabukicho and you'd get in trouble if you took a contract there.
Interesting to hear garbage disposal being a common business organized crime go for. I guess there's many utilities too to have garbage disposal infrastructure for other illegal activities
it is that, it is a fairly undesirable business for goody two shoes to go into and expose people, it is also not a sympathetic business type, and everybody needs it.
Garbage disposal is also remarkably hard in Japan, maybe understandable since they don't have anywhere to put it.
Instead of the famous Japanese customer service, residential garbage requires you to sort it, put it in transparent bags, put it out on specific days etc. so your neighbors can personally shame you if you do any of it wrong.
Commercial garbage in Tokyo gets left out on the street (like NYC up until this year) and occasionally attracts rats.
Japan burns 80% of their garbage compared to 35% of Germany or 12% of US. So disposal isn't very complex but does entail a lot of sorting.
The rest of Japan's garbage culture (small bins, poor/mafia organization etc.) is totally self inflicted and is more of a cultural phenomena rather than a technical one.
watch The Sopranos :)
or ghost in the shell
No, it's way worse than that. They not only control the garbage disposal business and regional administration, they physically stop you from keeping your street / neighbourhood / town clean...Guess how do I know.
It's their "service" or no service, with some extremely narrow exceptions, like a very small town named Aci Bonaccorsi, which fought that and now they're able to keep their streets on an amazing level of cleaniness compared to nearby municipalities.
Garbage disposal is the last remaining big business handled by the local mafia (drugs are handled by camorra nowadays) and they're absolutely doing anything to avoid losing that.
It was/is also that way in Athens, at least in the "anarchist" quarter of town. Every Friday the so-called anarchists (would) take dumpsters and light them on fire, to make a point, that the government is corrupt, or something. I'm not Greek so I can't speak for Greeks but other Greeks told me it's just part of life, so just look the other way. Also trash collection seems to often be an issue. They also have an island just for trash, but I heard it's already overflowing so they are looking for another island to use as a trash dump. Admittedly I haven't been there in a couple years, so maybe things have changed lately, but I do have a lot of photos of dumpsters on fire.
This is not really accurate. I have lived in Athens. There were some years where burned dumpsters were not a rare sight (after the big riots of 2008), but it is really, really uncommon, especially considering the size of Athens.
And I have never heard anything (or were able to find something on google) about an island full of trash. Islands are simply too valuable for that, and you'd also need to bring the trash there by boat.
When did you last live there? I was traveling/living in various parts of Greece for short periods of time over the last 30 years, the last time in 2018, where, due to EU economic sanctions, there were still regular fires happening in the anarchist district (Exarcheia). Googling shows that there are still regularly things burning there (as well as Zografou), though lately[0] it seems to be primarily vehicles. Just Google "Exarcheia fires" and you will find a lot of articles from almost every year going back to at least 2008.
Zakynthos is the island I was referring to. It's an illegal dumping ground, and even the EU has fined them for it. Also Kalymnos has a decades-old issue with burning trash - they even call it "trash volcano". Lots of other islands also have illegal dumping issues. Also many nature areas in mainland Greece are not in the most pristine state, often littered with junk, often junk that you can tell has been there for a long time. Whenever I went exploring by car, we would find the most beautiful areas but almost always trash everywhere :( Maybe it's gotten better though, I haven't been back since 2019, though I'm not sure I really want to.
[0] https://www.thenationalherald.com/arsonists-run-amok-in-athe...
Sort of interesting, yes. But it’s human nature to put more effort into something you might have some influence over rather than something you don’t. Possibly doing more of the former could lead to the latter being more feasible
Honest question. Is Sicily actually economically important enough for such an expensive mega bridge? To my mind it would make more sense to invest that money in Milan.
Why invest in the region that’s already developed when you can invest in one that still has room to grow? That’s the meaning of investment. It seems likely that Sicily is poorer, in part, because of the lack of a bridge to the continent.
The opposite angle is that investing is a well functioning region gives better results that investing in a corrupt and dysfunctional one.
To figure out which angle is more correct, you need to consider facts about the specific regions.
But Milan is a sure bet? You know that you'll make the money back.
Backwards regions are subsidised by the cities. Sicily can be made into a tourist resort for pensioners.
Only if Sicily can somehow make water magically appear (I won't bother linking any articles, as there are literally hundreds in the last 2-3 years about the utter lack of water and suffering of Sicilians).
Or perhaps building a bridge will enable them to bring water in easily from the mainland?
The water issues are less due to actual desertification (it's a contributing factor too, of course) and more caused by the ancient and perpetually leaking pipes infrastructure. Way more compromised on the weastern side than on the opposite part.
Speaking with the experience of someone who has spent a good half of his life on that island: Sicily's problems are mainly due to the following factors, in this order: culture and mismanagement. Everything else (yes, including the organized crime) comes in a very, very distant third place.
There already is investment. Milan just opened a new metro line to its airport over the past couple years; and the new Turin to Lyon tunnel will allow Milan to Paris in 4h30 compared to 7h today.
What would you build with $20B near Milan? Also, it's not like Northern Italy is forgotten when it comes to government investment. The Brenner Base Tunnel is being built there which will probably cost on the order of $15B or more.
Per-capita GDP is very low for Sicily relative to other regions - but it still has an overall GDP of around $100B, which is similar to Costa Rica or Croatia. Giving it a car/rail connection to the mainland would be a huge boon for the region and Italy in general.
With its potential and location and it’s well worth it.
There's been suggestions to use the military as construction labour
https://youtu.be/ei-bG4XfB4s
Feels like no one really wants a solution
Sounds very similar to HS2 in the UK
Or the Fehmarn Belt tunnel (northern Germany to Denmark).
Or probably most of those big infrastructure construction projects.
Not sure why you added the Fehmarn Belt tunnel, there are no rumors or news of being mismanaged or going over the budget or being behind schedule.
https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/fehmarnbelt-delayed-...
> Sund & Bælt, the Danish transport company overseeing the project, has now confirmed that IVY has not yet completed full testing and has not received final approvals from relevant authorities, despite arriving on site last October. The preparatory delay is about 18 months, a setback that project managers say makes meeting the original 2029 opening target difficult.
> There is also an issue with restrictions around the working conditions. Contracts for the main construction works were signed in 2016, before German planning approval had been granted. That timing meant certain later-imposed requirements – notably restrictions on underwater noise from work vessels and limits on sediment spill in German waters – were not written into the original contracts, complicating attempts to speed up work now that the rules are in place.
Over budget, decades behind schedule because Germany does everything to rise costs and delay. First they sunk the bridge project, now they delay the tunnel project. See the Wikipedia page.
Hadn’t they designed a bridge, they were getting ready to build it, and it was changed to a tunnel.
It does make sense since tunnels won’t need to closed for high winds like bridges do.
I might have misremembered bits of this.
You're describing a perfectly normal and healthy development arc.
An initial study into a problem poses a preferred solution.
Time and effort is put into deep study of the solution path. Unfortunately, in this case the study proves it is far less ideal than initially assumed.
The project is switched to Plan B.
Granted, sometimes this kind of early change in direction is for dumb or dishonest reasons, but one cannot perfectly know the results before the studies are completed.
I am in rail design. We are currently designing things for needs in 2030-2060. The world is complicated.
At least this one is getting built, similar to the Brenner Base Tunnel in the South - the common thing tying both projects together is Deutsche Bahn, the federal parliament and the local parliaments being unable to get their asses together and expand the regional tracks to be able to carry the extended traffic that both these tunnels enable.
But is Germany even deeply involved there? I thought construction was split between AT and IT.
The BBT itself, no that's indeed (thank God) not handled by DB.
But the BBT also needs supporting infrastructure from Kufstein to Munich, the so called Brenner Nordzulauf [1], some of which (the Truderinger Spange) is also covered by the Ausbaustrecke 38 programme [2]. Unfortunately, the Brenner Nordzulauf has been hotly contested [3] with very good points being raised - among others, some of the route proposals run through nature protection reservates, people are skeptical of years worth of construction, noise, debris, rail and road blocks, and separation of entire areas by another rail track.
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenner-Nordzulauf
[2] https://www.bahnausbau-muenchen.de/projekt.html?PID=29
[3] https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/ebersberg/brenner-basis...
And Berlin Airport
And the Edinburgh Tram Project
Future:
- Heathrow Third Runway (assuming the government meddle in it heavily)
- Lower Thames Crossing
The initial phase of the Edinburgh Trams project wasn't great - but I suspect everyone involved knew it was going to be difficult and it's the approach of getting the project started and once started it's difficult to kill (see Robert Moses for that strategy!).
However, it's now a good service, popular and the trams are probably going to be expanded to much more of the city?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh_Trams
Also the Queensferry Crossing bridge was built with relatively little fuss - there were some delays but those were down to some spells of very bad weather.
As a taxpayer, I can't stomach such acceptance of incompetence and mismanagement and corruption in the UK, personally.
It was a "litany of avoidable failures" as the Hardie report explained.
It does look like a tremendous success now though (not financially though. A double whammy for the taxpayer). The ends justify the means I guess?
Indeed, I wasn't trying to defend the management of the trams project - which did seem a farce.
Mind you - the investigation into the trams itself took far longer than expected and cost far more than anyone thought it should...
> the investigation into the trams itself took far longer than expected and cost far more than anyone thought it should
It's like the dessert coming out after the buffet! Doubles all round!