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| Foreign companies bid for US$14B high-speed rail project |
| News Archive - Industry Headline - September news | |
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(ChinaOnline, Sept 25, 2006) China will start reviewing bids submitted by global rail-engineering companies next week for a high-speed rail link between Beijing and nearby Tianjin.
Sunday is the deadline for the companies to submit their bids to help build the 140-kilometer (86.8 miles) railway, estimated to cost 14.3 billion yuan (US$1.7 billion), and the winner will be announced in a few weeks, China Daily reported, quoting a source with an unnamed German firm bidding for the contracts.
The high-speed link, on which trains will travel above 200 kilometers (124 miles) per hour, will shorten a one-way trip between the cities to half an hour, according to plans by the Ministry of Railways.
Construction is due to start by June and the railroad will become operational in 2007, Tianjin Mayor Dai Xianglong told Xinhua News Agency.
Beijing has approved the building of 3,000 kilometers (1860 miles) of high-speed railways nationwide. The approved projects, however, do not including the much-anticipated 1,300-kilometer (806 miles) link between the Chinese capital and financial hub Shanghai, estimated to cost 100 billion yuan (US$12.1 billion), the report said.
Major competitors for the Beijing-Shanghai railway include Japan’s Shinkansen, France’s TGV and Germany’s ICE, it noted. |
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