Strait of Messina Bridge have made the span more than 60% longer than the Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge in Japan—the largest suspension bridge in the world at . Plans called for four traffic lanes (two driving lanes and one emergency lane in each direction), two railway tracks and two pedestrian lanes. In order to provide a minimum vertical clearance for navigation of , the height of the two towers was to be . This would have been taller than the Millau Viaduct in France (currently the tallest bridge in the world at ). The bridge's suspension system would have relied on two pairs of steel cables,
Rio–Antirrio bridge and a pedestrian walkway. Its five-span four-pylon cable-stayed portion of length is the world's third longest cable-stayed deck; only the decks of the Jiaxing-Shaoxing Sea Bridge in Shaoxing, China and the Millau Viaduct in southern France are longer at 2,680 m (8,793 ft) and , respectively. However, as the latter is also supported by bearings at the pylons apart from cable stays, the Rio–Antirrio Bridge deck might be considered the longest cable-stayed "suspended" deck. This bridge is widely considered to be an engineering masterpiece, owing to several solutions applied to span the difficult site. These difficulties include deep water, insecure