Italy approves biggest bridge plan

A photo simulation of what the 3,300-metre bridge over the Messina straits will look like

ROME, Italy -- Italy has announced it is planning to build what will be the world's longest suspension bridge.

The two-mile long bridge will span the straits of Messina and link the Italian mainland to the island of Sicily.

"This time we're going to do it, I promise you," Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said on Thursday after the cabinet meeting that approved the scheme.

Infrastructure Minister Pietro Lunardi declared that the first stone of a bridge dreamed of since Roman times would be laid by 2005 at the latest.

"The whole thing should be done within five or six years," Lunardi said of a project set to cost $4.3 billion.

For years, structural engineers and architects have dreamed of the possibility of building the road bridge suspended between two vertical towers.

The central span will be nearly three times that of San Francisco's Golden Gate, built in 1937.

It will be 200 feet wide and have 12 lanes carrying cars, trucks and trains. Its twin towers would soar 1,230 feet above sea level.

The entire bridge, including supporting cables, would weigh some 300,000 tons, and if all the cables used to support it were put end to end they would circle the earth five times.

The bridge company says tests on models show the structure would withstand an earthquake of more than 7.1 on the Richter scale, even if the epicentre were only nine miles away.

And the company has also said that tests showed the bridge would withstand a bomb attack or the impact of a plane crash into one or more of its supporting cables.

"The bridge will be done. At this point, nothing is missing," Lunardi said. "There's the political will and the technology is in place. Work can begin."

Italy had been contemplating whether to build the bridge since Giuseppe Garibaldi landed in Sicily in 1860 to complete the unification of the nation.

High costs, fears of possible earthquakes, worry about organised crime infiltrating the construction and, in recent years, concerns by environmental groups has put off a decision.

The six-lane, 3,911 metre Akashi bridge in Japan, which links Shikoku to Honshu, is currently the world's largest suspension bridge.

Prior to its opening, in 1999, the longest suspension bridge was the 1,624 metre Great Belt East Bridge of Denmark.

Britain's 1,410 metre-long Humber River bridge, near Hull, completed in 1981, is now third.