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,
Millau Viaduct two days later on 16 December. The bridge has been consistently ranked as one of the great engineering achievements of all time, and received the 2006 Outstanding Structure Award from the International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering. In the 1980s, high levels of road traffic near Millau in the Tarn valley were causing congestion, especially in the summer due to holiday traffic on the route from Paris to Spain. A method of bypassing Millau had long been considered, not only to ease the flow and reduce journey times for long distance traffic, but also to improve the quality of