Plans to build the world's longest suspension bridge to link Sicily and the Italian mainland are back on track and the bridge may open as early as 2016, the head of Italy's road-building agency ANAS said Friday.
Pietro Ciucci told ANSA that the project - one of the keystones of Premier Silvio Berlusconi's public works programme - would be able to restart smoothly despite being put into cold storage by the previous Prodi government.
Ciucci said the groundwork would start being relaid by the end of the year thanks to the ''major'' preparatory work done during Berlusconi's last term in power between 2001 and 2006.
The aim would be get the general contractor moving next year, start the actual work halfway through 2010, and cut the ribbon in 2016, he said.
''It's a tough goal, but possible,'' Ciucci said.
If Berlusconi lasts a full term again his government would end in 2013. However, it would be too late for his rivals to stop the project if they got in, the bridge's proponents say.
The Messina bridge has been hailed as a huge job-creation scheme that would give Italy's image a major boost while bringing Sicily closer to the mainland in both physical and social terms.
But it has been opposed by environmentalists and dogged by concerns over its safety and fears of potential Mafia involvement.
Italy's last transport minister, Alessandro Bianchi, scotched the multi-billion-euro project, calling it ''the most useless and damaging project in Italy in the last 100 years''.
When and if completed, the bridge would replace slow ferry services between Sicily and the mainland.
The 3,690-metre-long bridge has been designed to be able to handle 4,500 cars an hour and 200 trains a day.
Work on the 6.5-billion-euro structure was originally scheduled to start in late 2006 and end in 2012.
