Beijing: China will start building “urgently needed” railway projects this year as part of its 12th five-year plan (2011-2015) to shore up infrastructure, the China Securities Journal said on Thursday, citing the cabinet.

China had moved to slow railway project approvals to address public anger after a crash on a new high-speed rail line in July that killed 40 people.

China’s railways have been plagued with problems, with an audit of the flagship Beijing-Shanghai link finding evidence of fraud, waste, mismanagement and irregular accounting and procurement, totaling billions of yuan.

The China Securities Journal cited a cabinet meeting late on Wednesday, chaired by Premier Wen Jiabao, had agreed to begin new rail projects.

“We need to complete a number of major railway projects and start a number of new projects that are urgently needed and necessary when time is appropriate,” it reported of the meeting.

But the journal did not give the amount of planned new railway investment. State media have reported that the ministry plans to cut its annual railway investment by 15 percent in 2012 to 400 billion yuan.

Slower investment could reduce financial strains on the heavily-indebted Railway Ministry, China’s largest bond issuer after the treasury and with outstanding debt of 2.23 trillion yuan as of the end of last September.

China's economic engines of growth have begun to accelerate again.
After approvals for new railroad projects spiked to a five-year high in the third quarter of 2010, the number of new plans slowed, then completely halted throughout 2011, decreasing 89 percent by value, says J.P. Morgan.
There were multiple reasons for the slowdown in railroad construction, says BCA. A bullet train crash caused heightened concern for safety last summer. Also, the government intentionally delayed projects as it pulled the brakes to decelerate growth and curb inflation.
Since China received signs of slowing inflation over the past few months, it can now shift its attention toward growth.
Recent policies are sending a "full steam ahead" message to railway investment. According to J.P. Morgan, in December and January, China announced tax benefits on interest income for railway bondholders, issued bonds for railway projects, and injected cash into the two largest train makers. This concerted effort should help the country meet its long-term goal to connect 100 percent of cities with a network of high-speed rail.
 

Following their success in winning first prize in an international competition, the architects von Gerkan, Marg and Partners (gmp) have been commissioned to design the new southern railway station in Hangzhou. The project involves the conversion and extension of the station in the Xiao Shan district to the south of the Qiantang river; after the eastern and main railway stations it will be the third largest railway station of this metropolis.

The design reflects the local culture, with the station building picking up elements of traditional buildings in Hangzhou: the base plinth consists of grey granite, the main building’s white walls enclose the waiting room level which is framed by perforated vertical slats – a reference to the traditional Chinese window shutters.

Passengers enter the station through foyers to the east and west. The 200 meter long and 18 meter high wait- ing hall - with its free-spanning construction without columns and plentiful daylight - offers passengers easy orientation. It creates a light-flooded space and provides a unique experience for passengers upon their arrival and departure. There are escalators and lifts for passengers and visitors to descend to the total of seven platforms.

The Hangzhou South Railway Station is not the only railway station project by gmp Architects. In addition to the main railway station in Berlin, which is the largest interchange station in Europe, they have built the Tianjin West Railway Station which, following its completion in 2011, serves as a stop along the high-speed line between Beijing and Shanghai.
 

Safety and quality are the top priorities for China's transport infrastructure construction, the State Council said on Wednesday.

A strict mechanism for transport safety supervision and quality management should be established in coordination with the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-15), according to a statement issued by the State Council, after an executive meeting presided over by Premier Wen Jiabao.

The mechanism should cover every stage of the construction from planning, design and construction to operation, it said.

Efforts should be made to advance technology and improve equipment, it added.

The meeting, which discussed and adopted the 12th Five-Year Plan for building a comprehensive transport system, also agreed that transport infrastructure can be "moderately advanced", and private investment is encouraged in the infrastructure construction.

China aims to form a comprehensive transport network by 2015, which has five east-west arteries and five north-south arteries as the backbones.

The national high-speed railway network and the national expressway network are both expected to take shape during the period. The civil aviation network is expected to further expand.

Around the country, there will be 42 national comprehensive transport hubs under the plan.

The emphasis on safety and quality at the State Council's executive meeting is in response to growing public worries over the safety of the country's sprawling transport network.

Last year, 40 people were killed and nearly 200 injured in a train crash in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province. After a thorough investigation, the State Council concluded that serious design flaws in the control equipment used at Wenzhou South Railway Station and sloppy management caused the crash.

Media reported last week that the ground subsided under a stretch of a high-speed rail line between Wuhan and Yichang, which is set to open in May. Concerns were raised over the railway's safety after an earthwork supplier disclosed that the builder did not consolidate the railway foundation as designed.

Yang Hao, a professor specializing in transport at Beijing Jiaotong University, said that problems mainly exist in the supervision of the construction process and construction quality, as well as in railway operation management.

"In the past, railway operation relied on human management," he said. "That's not enough now. It's time to install more high-tech equipment to assist the management of railway operation."

The meeting also discussed and passed the 12th Five-Year Plan for the national project on safe drinking water in rural areas.

Further efforts are required to guarantee the safety of drinking water for the 298 million rural residents and 114,000 rural schools, while supplying 80 percent of the rural areas with water.

The project should have an overall plan, taking all factors into consideration, the statement said, adding that priority should be given to improve the quality of water that has seriously affected people's health and tackling the water shortage in certain areas.

However, taking into consideration the actual conditions of an area, local government can carry out a gradual implementation by installing scattered water supply facilities in some areas instead of covering the whole rural region with centralized ones, the statement said.

A prevention and governance system for water quality is also necessary to curb water pollution.

The conference also emphasized the importance of encouraging the participation of farmers while promoting water conservation.
 

BEIJING: The World Bank has approved a US$200mil loan to China to help finance the construction of the ZhangHu (Zhangjiakou-Hohhot) railway line.

World Bank said in a statement that the railway line project would improve accessibility of China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region and meet the anticipated transport demand along the Zhangjiakou-Hohhot corridor through the provision of additional railway capacity.

Inner Mongolia in northern China has seen rapid development in terms of urbanisation and industrialisation.

With a total investment of more than US$4.5bil, the high-speed railway line is among the new routes proposed in China's Mid- and Long-Term Railway Network Plan to increase the country's rail network to 120,000km by 2020, including 16,000km of high-speed passenger rail.

China was undertaking the world's largest national railway development programme for more than a century and it would have a profound impact on the character of transport in China for generations to come, said World Bank's lead transport specialist John Scales.

In the past three decades, the World Bank has lent more than US$3.7bil in support of China's railway development.

Twenty-four passenger trains that were halted due to strong gales, resumed operations Tuesday afternoon in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, said local railway bureau.

Around 4:10 p.m. Tuesday, all twenty-four passenger trains on two railway lines resumed operations as the winds had subsided, an official with the Urumqi Railway Bureau said.

Wind speeds reached 100 km per hour in some areas, and snowstorms also blasted some areas in Xinjiang on Monday.

The operations of 15 passenger trains traveling from the region's capital of Urumqi to Lanzhou, the capital of neighboring Gansu province, had been suspended since 4 a.m. Tuesday.

Another nine passenger trains running from Turpan to Kashgar along the railway line in southern Xinjiang had been halted since 9:45 p.m. Monday.
 

A company partly owned by Anhui-based Masteel Co.will break the foreign monopoly of high-speed train wheels.

Masteel Co., China's largest and oldest wheel producer, and Jinxi Industries Group Co., a subsidiary of China North Industries Group Corp.(Norinco Group), held an opening ceremony for their joint company in Beijing on March 12.

 With an investment of 1.2 billion yuan ($190 million), the firm will have an annual capacity of 70,000 axles.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, Hu Yadong, deputy minister of railways, expressed congratulations on the establishment of Masteel Jinxi Rail Transport Facility Company and hoped it will step up research and development (R&D) of high-speed trains and high-power locomotives, improve production of them and speed up localization of high-speed train wheels to win honours for the country and make contributions to the local economy.

Sun Jinlong, deputy secretary of the Anhui Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), attended the ceremony.

WUHAN, March 17 (Xinhua) -- A section of new railway in central Hebei province that sank last week has got villagers and railway workers talking about its safety.

Some 7.2 km of track built to form part of the Wuhan-Yichang Railway sank on March 9 after rain battered the area, maintenance workers at the scene said.

"I doubt if the railway is safe since they have rebuilt the section again and again," said 75-year-old Zou Liurong from the Xingfu village.

The rails and sleepers in question have been removed from the site, in Haokou town in the city of Qianjiang.

"We are looking forward to the operation of the railway but have no idea of the problem. We do not know whether it is serious," said Dai Zhongxiao, a villager from the small settlement of Nanwan.

"Last year, we reinforced part of the track and this time we are pinning up the whole subsiding section," said a worker at the scene.

"We discovered the problem during the evaluation phase. Up to 3 mm of sinkage a month is considered normal, but many points of the track had sunken by more than that," said Sun Shengjie, deputy general manager of the China Railway 12th Bureau Group, responsible for the construction of the line.

Excessive sinking can lead to derailment, said experts on traffic engineering design.

Workers at the scene said the ground where the sinking section is located used to be a lake which dried up.

Building a viaduct can solve the problem, said Wang Mengshu, member of Chinese Academy of Engineering.

"They planned to build a viaduct on this section but it was changed into subgrade to save costs," said a contractor of the construction project on condition of anonymity.

But a source with the owner of the railway, Huhanrong Railway Hubei Co.Ltd, denied the statement.

It is still not clear that the design, the construction, or the construction supervision should be blamed, said Sun Shengjie.

We have invited experts to investigate the cause of the settlement, said Wang Zujian, director of the leadership office of Hubei provincial railway construction.

The 291-km-long Wuhan-Yichang Railway which is an important part of the Huhanrong high-speed railway from Shanghai to Chengdu will benefit 36 million people living in Jianghan Plain upon completion as the area at the middle reaches of the Yangtze River has never before had a trunk railway.

The Wuhan-Yichang Railway is expected to open in May. The sinking part has already undergone test runs.

According to relevant regulations, the rebuilt section of the Wuhan-Yichang Railway should undergo a series of procedures including evaluation of experts, dynamic testing inspections, and safety assessment before being put into operation.

CHINA: CSR Qingdao Sifang Locomotive & Rolling Stock Co announced on March 21 that it had been selected to supply high speed trainsets for the 146 km Express Rail Link which will connect Hong Kong with Shenzhen and Guangzhou.

The contract is still to be signed, but will cover nine eight-car trainsets with a top speed of 350 km/h based on the CRH380A design. 

The first 102 km section of the Express Rail Link between Guangzhou South and Shenzhen North opened on December 26 2011. The section to the internal border with Hong Kong and the 26 km section within the Special Administrative Region is now under construction with opening scheduled for 2015. The Hong Kong section of the line will be completely in tunnel, with a maximum speed of 200 km/h.

China's economic engines of growth have begun to accelerate again, but you wouldn't know it by looking at the chart below. After approvals for new railroad projects spiked to a five-year high in the third quarter of 2010, the number of new plans slowed, then completely halted throughout 2011, decreasing 89 percent by value, says J.P. Morgan.
There were multiple reasons for the slowdown in railroad construction, says BCA. A bullet train crash caused heightened concern for safety last summer. Also, the government intentionally delayed projects as it pulled the brakes to decelerate growth and curb inflation.

Since China received signs of slowing inflation over the past few months, it can now shift its attention toward growth. Recent policies are sending a "full steam ahead" message to railway investment. According to J.P. Morgan, in December and January, China announced tax benefits on interest income for railway bondholders, issued bonds for railway projects, and injected cash into the two largest train makers. This concerted effort should help the country meet its long-term goal to connect 100 percent of cities with a network of high-speed rail.

CLSA's Andy Rothman and I will be discussing in greater detail the development of China's infrastructure system and consumer demand during our webcast, Navigating China's Transition to a Consumer-Driven Economy, on April 5. Over the past two decades, China's railway system has come a long way very quickly, with track length increasing 50 percent since 1995, says BCA. However, demand has increased at a faster rate, though, as "passengers travelling on the country's railway system per year doubled during the same period, while railway freight increased by 150 percent," says BCA.

And, on a per capita basis, China's rail length is much lower than most major economies, according to BCA Research. When you compare the total length of railways in developed and emerging markets, Australia has the most rail per capital, with 1.77 kilometers of railway per 1,000 persons; Brazil has considerably less, with only 0.15 kilometers of rail track per 1,000. However, as you can see below, China lands in last place for the total length of railway per capita.

Although China has been busy constructing its railways over the past few years, this comparison shows that this infrastructure buildout has been more of a "catch-up process," rather than an "overshoot," says BCA.
 

The first of 30 urban trains ordered from Chinese state company China CNR Corporation Limited by the government of the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro started operating Tuesday with an inaugural journey taken by the interim governor Luiz Fernando Pezão, the Brazilian press reported.

The train, which had four carriages and capacity for 1,300 passengers, has internal closed-circuit television and a direct communication system with the Operational Control Centre of SuperVia, the network of urban trains of the Rio de Janeiro metropolitan region.

This first train is part of a programme of investment in the urban rail sector estimated at 2.4 billion reals, and as well as the 30 trains already bought another 60 will be acquired by the Transport Secretariat of Rio de Janeiro state.

The state government also decided that SuperVia will buy a further 30 trains and modernize 73 of its current fleet.

Around 540,000 people use SuperVia’s services every day and the company operates 98 train stations and five cable car stations across 12 of the state’s municipal areas.

In November 2010, Odebrecht TransPort, an Odebrecht group company for urban transport, road concessions, integrated logistics systems, and airports took a majority stake in SuperVia.

A subsidiary of China South Locomotive and Rolling Stock Corporation Limited (CSR) announced Tuesday that it has won a bid to provide high-speed trains for the Hong Kong section of an inter-city high-speed railway connecting Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Guangzhou.

The company said that it will supply nine sets of high-speed trains for Hong Kong, each set consisting of eight carriages. The trains are designed to reach a speed of 350 km/h.

Subsidiary CSR Sifang said the high-speed trains will be based on its independently-made CRH 380A-model trains. The company said it will insure the safety and reliability of the trains while seeking to make further improvements.

CSR is China's leading train manufacturer. The inter-city railway will be 142 kilometers in length upon completion. The railway is expected to completed by 2015.
 

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China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Machinery and Electronic Products of Commerce Credit Evaluation Results News  Conferencewas held in Beijing on March 9, 2012.  Vice Minister Mr. Jiang Yaoping, Officers from the Ministry of Commerce and CCCME, representatives of A grade and above enterprises and more than 20 news media attended the conference.
 
CCCME issued AAA Credit Grade is the highest commerce credit in the national level of China. It is a certificate for the enterprise to enter the globe market. Especially, CNR Import & Export Corp., Ltd. upgraded from AA to AAA grade this time.

The Beijing Subway is a rapid transit rail network that serves the urban and suburban districts of the Chinese capital. But now, it's about to phase out all old carriages and replace them with new air-conditioned ones. Four new rail lines are also being added to the transport system.

It's just another regular day for subway driver Zhang XiaoYu. This marks the 12,960th day he has been on the tracks. In the past 36 years, he has witnessed the evolution of the Beijing Subway system.

Zhang XiaoYu said, "I have driven every type of train since the day I started working for Beijing Subway. From the oldest type without ventilation to the latest air-conditioned train Triple-V-F which makes it more comfortable for passengers, the new train uses less electricity and is more environmental friendly. "

I was fortunate enough to try out the driving simulator on the latest model the triple-V-F. Zhang said the subway was originally for tourism purposes, but it has become an essential public transport tool for everyone here in Beijing.

Zhang XiaoYu said, "I think the passenger load has grown exponentially in recent years, especially during the morning and evening peak hours.”

To ease road traffic, the government has set a policy to restrict purchase of private cars. Over 5 million people use the subway every day. So that combined with a cheap 2 yuan fare has driven up the number of subway passengers significantly.

In response, Beijing Metro spokesman Jia Peng says the total mileage of the subway will be over 450 kilometres with the additional lines.

Jia Peng said, "By the end of 2012, Beijing will open four new subway lines, the new lines will significantly expand the subway's coverage, especially south and west of the city. one will be parallel to the current line 1 which crosses the entire Chang'an Street. Line 10, when fully completed, will form a complete loop around Line 2."

The opening of new lines also benefits real estate agencies.

"The property sales and rental business is getting better, especially with the opening of more subway stations which enable residents to travel more efficiently."

However network operations also posts great challenges.

"With the opening of the peripheral lines, more passengers will flow into the city, adding more pressure to subway stations, especially for stops like us - the intersection between urban and rural areas - the passenger flow is immense."

Jia says there's currently a push towards quality improvement for the entire subway system.
 

A transportation company responsible for installing defective parts on Chicago's subway cars is the leading candidate to build BART’s $3.4 billion fleet of new train cars, The Bay Citizen has learned.

Bombardier Transportation outscored two other companies in the bidding process to build BART's new fleet, General Manager Grace Crunican said Friday in a memo obtained by The Bay Citizen.

Chicago Transit Authorty inspectors found that Bombardier installed defective parts made by a Chinese supplier on new rail cars, the Chicago Tribune reported. Initially, the firm only wanted to replace the most damaged parts, according to the newspaper.

The Canadian company must still undergo a rigorous audit before BART staff decides to recommend it to build the cars, said Paul Oversier, assistant general manager for operations at BART.

Top BART officials say replacing the cars is the most expensive and important undertaking at the transit agency, which covers 104 miles and carries more than 300,000 riders every day. The 775 new cars will be designed by BMW and will feature easy-to-clean seats. They will begin rolling down the tracks in 2018.

Bombardier began manufacturing 706 new cars for the CTA in June, after winning a $1.14 billion contract. But in December, the CTA took the first 54 cars Bombardier delivered off the tracks, after inspectors found flaws in the wheel components. The Chicago Tribune reported last week that defective steel parts manufactured by one of Bombardier’s Chinese suppliers could cause derailments.

Molly Sullivan, a spokeswoman for the CTA, said that its inspectors first identified a problem with a part that helps attach the wheels and axels to the rail cars in November. The discovery was made at Bombardier's U.S. assembly plant, and the problem was traced to a Chinese foundry.

The company then shut down production, and the CTA took the trains containing the parts out of service, while Bombardier performed an internal investigation. After CTA insisted, Bombardier agreed to replace the parts in all of the trains.

Sullivan downplayed the Tribune report about possible derailments.

“Our experts told us that there was very little risk, and had there been any, it would have been years down the road,” she said.

Maryanne Roberts, a spokeswoman for Bombardier, said Friday that BART riders shouldn't worry about the safety of the company's rail cars.

"There are literally thousands of parts on a car and this was just one part — it was found before there was any safety issue," Roberts said."It was an issue with a sub-supplier that has been replaced. We've stepped up our already-strong control process."

Roberts called the Tribune report "exaggerated," adding that there was "never any fear of derailment."

Oversier declined to comment on whether Bombardier's problems in Chicago would affect whether BART would choose the firm. But he said that transit agencies should learn from what happened there.

“It is an example of why the owner needs to be aggressive and do their due diligence when the cars are being designed and built,” Oversier said.

Bombardier was the low bidder for the BART car project. It priced a single car at $2.95 million, 2 percent below Alstom, a French firm, and 4 percent below Hyundai Rotem, a South Korean manufacturer. The total cost of each car will be about $5.1 million, after inflation, taxes and other costs.

BART officials scored each bid on several factors — price, experience, design, approach to work, delivery speed and energy efficiency, in that order of importance, Oversier explained.

Bombardier must now undergo an audit of how well its bid meets so-called Buy America requirements. Under federal law, transit agencies must buy rail cars from companies that produce 60 percent of the car's total value in the United States.

Even though there are no American companies that could build BART’s new fleet of cars, some local officials have loudly protested the fact that the winning bidder will be from another country.

Once an audit of Bombardier's bid is completed next month, BART staff will make a final recommendation. The transit agency's board will vote to award the lucrative contract in early May, according to the memo.

Bombardier isn’t the only bidder facing scrutiny. The Korean government ordered Hyundai Rotem to recall 19 new bullet trains after a series of breakdowns last year, the Korea Times reported.

Bombardier, which also makes planes, has built cars for New York City subway and the London Metro, among others.

BART officials and board members refused to talk specifically about each of the companies involved in the bidding process, owing to concerns about possible litigation.

"Every car builder, regardless of their reputation, goes through a difficult time,” Oversier said. “What distinguishes the good carmakers is how they deal with it, and also that it not be an ongoing problem.”