The amount of money earmarked for the government's Messina Bridge project would be enough to make the region it will be built from earthquake-proof, Calabria Governor Agazio Loiero said Wednesday.
Loiero said the region wasn't ''dogmatically'' against the bridge linking Calabria and Sicily but noted that it would be built in a seismic zone.
He said the 3 billion euros set aside for the planned link was, ''by a bizarre coincidence, exactly the same amount that could defend the buildings of Calabria from quake risks''.
The bridge has long been a pet project of Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi who recently stressed it would not be derailed by the Abruzzo earthquake.
Bridge-building company Stretto di Messina SpA last week put the cost of the project at more than double the figure cited by Loiero, or 6.3 billion euros.
Company CEO Pietro Ciucci made the estimate Friday after the contracts for the project, suspended in 2006 by Italy's then centre-left government, were reactivated.
The accords included one between Stretto di Messina and general contractor Eurolink.
According to Public Works Minister Altero Matteoli, work on the bridge will begin not later than the latter half of 2010 and the project will be completed in six years.
He added that, thanks to the reactivation of the contracts, costly legal suits filed after their suspension had been avoided.
Work on the bridge was originally scheduled to start in late 2006 and end in 2012.
However, the previous center-left government suspended the project which the then-transport minister, Alessandro Bianchi, defined as ''the most useless and damaging project in Italy in the last 100 years''.
The project was revived when Berlusconi's centre right returned to power last year.
Once completed, the bridge will replace slow ferry services between Sicily and the mainland.
The 3,690-metre-long bridge, the longest suspension bridge in the world, has been designed to be able to handle 4,500 cars an hour and 200 trains a day.
The government has dismissed concerns over seismic activity.
