It will also be true, and in fact with all evidence it is true, as the Deputy Minister at the Deputy Minister said yesterday in Genoa Infrastructure and Transport, Edoardo Rixi, on the occasion of a conference of the Authority of Harbour System of the Ligurian Sea Western on rail transport, which the Strait of Messina and also the bridge designed to cross it, which has become the work chosen by the holder of the Ministry, as well as secretary federal of the party in which Rixi militates, as a flag for the relaunch of the Italian infrastructure system, do not constitute a obstacle such as to block access to the Tyrrhenian Sea.

Rixi's clarification follows the recommendation not to build a bridge over the Strait too low, which would prevent the transit of several large commercial vessels, which is was recently advanced by the president of Federlogistica, Luigi Merlo, who is also manager of the shipowning group MSC that has one of the world's leading fleets of ships for the transport of goods and passengers ( of 23 February 2023). Reviving Merlo's warning, we had attributed to these the intention, which certainly did not have and did not we thought he had, to avoid the problem that arose in Spain where trains too large to pass through the Galleries. We had almost attributed to Merlo, in short, a Hyperbolic concern, certainly exaggerated given that even the Although a well-known Italian approximation would not have led to committing Such a mistake.

We were wrong. The concern expressed by Merlo does not Only is it well-founded, but it is based on considerations absolutely concrete, on data. Data such as those mentioned yesterday by Deputy Minister Rixi, who, if they probably did not crawl the skin of Blackbird because - evidently - A few weeks ago he knew what he was saying, they terrified many others (at least those who realized the enormity).

Stating that large ships will have no problem transiting under the bridge over the Strait of Messina, yesterday Rixi assured that it will still be higher than other bridges at key sites of the Mediterranean Sea and, to be on the safe side, it referred to one on the Suez Canal, which is one of the most important of the world: a bridge that, assured Rixi, is 60 meters high.

In the Suez Canal, beyond tunnels, mobile viaducts, swing bridges in operation or no longer used, the only one bridge that crosses it is the one at El-Qantara, which between the other is rather well known being endowed with the most high road plain in the world (70 meters) and under which is Allowed the transit of ships whose height does not exceed 68 meters compared to the maximum water level in the canal.

You will say: well, eight to ten meters of difference are not Then the end of the world. We answer: try to pass in a tunnel a train eight to ten centimeters wider than the tunnel.

To the writer, the categorical data mentioned by Rixi remind those proposed decades ago, in the period of the "reconquest" of Libya, to ensure that to find fresh water on the soil North African It would have been enough to scratch the ground with bare hands.

B.B.