Italy's $12.7B Bridge to Sicily [video] | Hacker News Reader

Italy's $12.7B Bridge to Sicily [video]

youtube.com

I'm Sicilian, and I would call this a well put video. If you go in Messina you will see that the city is oddly oriented with the back of the buildings and squares and everything facing the sea, like if the city is actively aware that the sea is dangerous. This shape was given by the reconstruction after the tsunami.

Btw: taking the boat from Messina to Villa San Giovanni is quite a nice experience. There is a tradition to eat arancini while crossing. Most Sicilians are not actually hoping so much to see this bridge to be completed, especially since in Catania and Palermo there are very high traffic airports with plenty of cheap options to go to Rome or Milan (Catania airport is the 3rd by number of flights in Italy). If the fast trains available in the North would be available here, it would be different perhaps.

About the social factors, if the bridge would start from Catania, where I live, I could be a bit more positive about the ability to complete it. Catania has kinda of a different mentality compared to the rest of Sicily (I guess I can tell this without biases since I'm from the center of Sicily and lived in multiple places for years). For instance Catania is the only place under Naples to have a subway. Apple and Ikea are in Catania, and so forth, in general you can make things work here, and even if this is a national project, local factors may play a role. Messina is not similarly well positioned.

> since in Catania and Palermo there are very high traffic airports with plenty of cheap options to go to Rome or Milan

What you fail to mention is that very often such “cheap” flights and paid in part by the state with public money. If that bridge you’d have other options

Actually the exact reverse is true: the flights are in general overpriced during vacation seasons because emigrates are desperate to return home and stay with their families a few days. So airways companies exploit this fact. They are cheap in certain periods (not for government helps that are minimal and only recently reintroduced: an unfair price with a 25% of discount remains an unfair price), terribly costly in other periods (500 euros for 2000km flight is common), because the government is not protecting enough people living here or living in Milan/Rome but originally from Sicily. They should have access to decent ticket prices. At the same time you can go from Milano Malpensa to Lisbona with 30 euros or alike...

Normally planes have price buckets - it’s just that at holidays cheap buckets are sold out quicker.

It’s a bit like those insane parking costs - they are left for people who REALLY need it.

Government can’t print more tickets for nonexistent seats.

> Catania airport is the 3rd by number of flights in Italy

5th, not 3rd [0], after Rome, Milan, Bergamo, Naples, and before Venice - passengers, not number of flights.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_busiest_airports_i...

Catania and Naples have the same number of flights if you check recent stats (last stats released: https://assaeroporti.com/statistiche/). Sometimes Catania is ahead, sometimes Naples. So indeed not 3rd but 4th, with Catania and Naples having the same traffic.

On yearly basis, in 2023 it was #6

See page 83 of

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JHNwYFeNqfE2K6u08vk2-_ujhrY...

> Most Sicilians are not actually hoping so much to see this bridge to be completed, especially since in Catania and Palermo there are very high traffic airports with plenty of cheap options to go to Rome or Milan (Catania airport is the 3rd by number of flights in Italy). If the fast trains available in the North would be available here, it would be different perhaps.

Would a rail connection help with shipping goods? Would a road connection help with transport trucks?

Well, this is a very fucked-up situation. When I was a child, during 80s, most of the Sicily / North Italy goods shipping was by train / boat, and we had good railways. Then a decision was made to favor trucks: I don't know why. So in general, yes, shipping goods via train was a lot better and less costly AFAIK. But politics play a role, as the trains where suppressed in Sicily with some agenda. In general companies shipping stuff from/to North with trucks are not in the cleanest hands. Note that trains can pass from Messina without huge issues as it was already made for decades. The train gets disassembled and put on the boat and assembled back on the other side, this happens many times every day. It is how it works right now. But in general, I believe that trains is what could give more sense to this project.

Back then most of the trucks were made by IVECO, hence FIAT. This is the same reason highways are quite developed across Italy, while Milan is the only place with proper infrastructure in place for commuters. It's the same reason Turin had to wait until early 2000s (before the Olympics) to get an underground rail.

The biggest issue with Sicily infrastructure is that most of the rail lines are single tracks, plus southern of Salerno you don't have high speed trains. Therefore the bridge itself cannot make much of an impact without fixing the infrastructure at both sides of the (hypothetical) bridge.

Sicily is really stunning. You make me want to return there now…

But I’m curious (if you don’t mind) - as an accomplished programmer/entrepreneur, do you ever feel torn between wanting to live in your idyllic home of Sicily, vs. a hub like Silicon Valley? Do you feel limited in terms of what you can do, and does that matter to you?

I ask because Sicily seems close to your heart, while I think it’s also safe to assume that you would have lots of opportunity elsewhere. I imagine staying was a very conscious decision?

There are lots of wonderful but “small” corners of the world where people might face the same dilemma.

Off-topic, but I would one day like to start a tech hub there called "Sicilian Valley". An ideal place for techies from northern Europe to spend the winter. Rent an office with your team for a week or two and have a great time.

Yeah this is a non trivial thing. Sicily is economically depressed, but what is interesting is that it is generally not culturally depressed, I mean we had geniuses like Majorana because the university of math in Catania was good once, and there are a lot of "thinkers" so you are not like alone in some island but with 5 million of people, part of which do the most desperate things and are intellectually very active. At the same time, the weather is good, the food is good, the life does not cost too much, there is a lot of history and nature. And... for people doing programming, there is the Internet, like this site. About connections with the IT system: in part I believe that in isolation you can accomplish more work, even if it is true that the group, the network, sometimes create a "chain effect", but I'm a very solitary programmer, so this setup worked for me. At the same time I don't "value" to remain where you were born: I respect a lot people that are tired form staying here and want to go away. What I miss the most is that the helathcare system in North Italy is at the same time free and among the best systems in the world. Here is decent, but not at the same level, so for serious stuff there are people going to Milan or Turin or Florence to get some procedure, and that's not cool. But, air quality is stellare compared to North, and this also is a part in the health story. Compromises...

To be fair, Catania has more fabs than any other city in Italy (2 with another fab in construction), also being home to the largest stmicroelectronics establishment in Italy, so I guess it kinda is Italy's silicon valley

Yea, coming from Trapani I can surely say that Catania doesn't even feel like Sicily. It is much more advanced than even Palermo, and no other city can really compete.

That's the real problem of Sicily; it's not about the bridge itself, but rather the whole ecomomic situation and living standard that lags behind the rest of Italy. I don't remember if the rest of Sicily is affected, but in Trapani we don't even get fresh water every day! Instead each house has canisters and pumps that fill every 3 days or so. Another example might be the almost complete lack of actual industries and a much more agricultural-based economy, to the point that almost all sicilians also own a farm or a piece of farmland (or at least I think so, again, I haven't visited much outside of Trapani). There are *lots* of things to improve, but I still think that Sicily has one of the highest economic potentials of the 20 regions, because it has lots of natural resources, people and space, and Catania is definitely an example of that potential turned into reality.

Also Palermo does have a subway, so Catania isn't the only city with such privilege.

I'm pretty sure that this bridge would be built either by the Chinese or it won't be built at all.

Fun fact: this bridge is in the works for ~2000 years; the Romans were the first to want to build it.

Also, this is a great region, if you can ever get there in an RV - you are not going to regret it!

Why an RV?

Doesn't have to be one :)

Many retirees from N. Europe drive to Sicily in the winter. So there are many RV parks and facilities, with an interesting variation of community, camaraderie, and, inevitably, farcically - snobbery.

It's rumoured that they _did_ build some sort of pontoon out of barrels, to transport the elephants captured by Lucius Caecilius Metellus after the Battle of Panormus. The story's widely attributed to Strabo or Pliny the Elder but I can't find the original source, whether or not we'd believe it. Tip of the galea to whoever tracks it down.

As an Italian, it's a wonderful project technically, but you will be hard pressed to find people in northern Italy that believe in it (can't speak for mid/lower). The tech challenges give it little credibility, but the mifias problems are really what makes it a non-starter for basically everyone here.

The video shows one politician a couple of times, but he's one of the most unreliable ones (and Italians one in general are not that reliable).

It's a political tool, many speculate it's just another big project that will never be completed, since it's a common historical pattern with heavy right-wing governments like the current one.

Even though a lot of money has already been spent, it remains especially difficult to detach this project from its political side so don't hold breath, or hope.

I'm from central Italy and nobody believes this will be done, even beyond criminal infiltrations, it's just the kind of projects that get brought out every few years to distract from actually important things.

But who knows, MOSE seemed a pipe dream too.

I am Italian and I would be greatly in favor of this. However, I am quite sure much of that money is going to end in the wrong pockets. And for a project of this scale and impact we can't afford that.

Why not a tunnel?

The Straits of Messina are ~250m deep, and Sicily has seen earthquakes up to magnitude ~7.5.

Whatever their budget - there isn't enough unobtainium around to construct tunnel wall strong enough.

How does this compare to the Seikan tunnel constructed 40 years ago?

https://web.archive.org/web/20161018110338/http://jr.hakodat...

> Minimum overburden (under seabed): 100m

> Maximum sea depth: 140m

Excuse me for being daft, is the difference going to be a showstopper ? Construction and material engineering surely advanced since quite a bit.

Admitting that I don't know the geology in Japan at all well...

At the Straits of Messina, the tunnel would be crossing an active rift zone ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siculo-Calabrian_rift ). That rift is the source of those big earthquakes - such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1908_Messina_earthquake - which was at the Straits, magnitude 7.1, and killed ~75k people. And for extra bonus fun - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_etna - is one of the world's most active volcanoes, part of that active rift zone, and less than 80km from the Straits.

(Vs. the geological maps I can find seem to show that the Seikan tunnel does not cross any sort of active fault.)

I’m Italian too. It’s just depressing for us to see so much public money percolating to organized crime (as it happens with many public projects). Who knows how many more billions will follow…

I guess Europeans forgot how to build and learned how to consume funding from public projects. I am not sure how good is the source, but the sums are the same as in serious German articles: https://eulerpool.com/en/news/politics/the-planned-train-rou...

Stuttgart 21: from €3,5B to €11,5B and finish not in sight. So the bridge has potential to reach €50B.

> Stuttgart 21: from €3,5B to €11,5B and finish not in sight. So the bridge has potential to reach €50B.

That is the purpose of the EU institutions. It's the 2nd biggest scam, after the mandatory pension schemes. Note that the EU is currently jealous of the biggest ponzi of all time and hence wants its own: they want to remove veto-rights of member states on fiscal policies to be able to create an EU-wide, mandatory, pension fund (it's literally in talks right now).

The public sector knows how to do one thing: seize private property (through taxes) to fund projects whose sole goal is to steal taxpayers money. Going from $3.5bn to $11bn over budget is the goal. In that these projects are very successful.

That's why we don't have the equivalent of Tesla in Europe and that's why the European State Agency is nowhere compared to SpaceX.

There's not a dollar or a EUR that's less well used that a dollar or EUR that's been through public spendings.

Play stupid communist games (like having gigantic public spendings), end, all EU-wide, with a stupid failing economy.

The EU shall only keep falling into irrelevancy on the world scene.

To be fair, NASA is nowhere compared to SpaceX also. So SpaceX is quite an anomaly in the USA as well. If SpaceX massively undercutting the prices and massively overshooting the capabilities of the likes of ULA and Boeing could have been predicted, then they never would have gotten the public funding that has bootstrapped this private company into the position it holds today.

You guess it from two projects? There are several world breaking infrastructure projects in Europe. Where are you from?

Add railway tunnel in Munich for now estimated €14B and my local 6 mile long train track extension, that is not finished for 30 years despite physical train track being there all the time. Can you name anything ground breaking finished this century? Airport in Berlin? Or Elbphilharmonie?

https://www.bbt-se.com/tunnel/baufortschritt/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3D1fLVQgZw

It might happen on schedule elsewhere. But on German side the connection to the tunnel is still in planing and not finished yet. And no end in sight.

" I guess Europeans forgot how to build and learned how to consume funding from public projects. I am not sure how good is the source, but the sums are the same as in serious German articles: https://eulerpool.com/en/news/politics/the-planned-train-rou... "

so I guess Europeans didnt forget as your 2 projects interpolation didnt work out very well.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com