South Africa signed a raft of agreements with China on Tuesday, including on the construction of a world-class oil refinery and upgrading the country's rail and port networks.

 

The deals were sealed at the end of talks between President Jacob Zuma and his counterpart Xi Jinping.

 

Under the oil agreement, China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (Sinopec) and South Africa's national oil company PetroSA will build a state-of-the-art crude refinery in a coastal industrial zone near Port Elizabeth.

 

China is also eyeing oil and gas exploration in South Africa and nearby countries, plus downstream opportunities such as constructing storage and logistics infrastructure.

 

South Africa's eastern neighbour Mozambique has become the latest investment destination following the recent discoveries of vast quantities of natural gas and coal reserves.

 

Angola, Africa's second largest oil producer is within the vicinity of South Africa.

 

China Development Bank will fund the revamp of South Africa's freight rail company Transnet, but details were not revealed. Transnet last year unveiled a 300 billion rand ($32.4 billion) investment plan.

 

Transnet group chief executive Brian Molefe hailed the agreement with China as a "historic agreement between two state-owned entities within BRICS" which goes to show the "opportunities inherent" in such diplomatic ties, reported SAPA news agency.

 

Zuma has earlier lauded China's economic success as an inspiration for Africa's biggest economy, but urged more equitable trade ties.

 

"We view China's success as a source of hope and inspiration as we engage with the task of finding our own solutions for bringing about a better future," Zuma said after talks with Xi.

 

"The rise of China therefore has lessons for us all as we seek to emulate your example."

 

Xi, who is making a three-nation stop on the continent, said China valued the relationships it has established with trading partners and will work to preserve them.

 

"We each see the other side as priority... and see the other side as an opportunity for our own development," he said.

 

"We are committed to strengthening our political trust, intensify economical cooperation, expand people to people exchanges and elevate the level of our cooperation to the benefit of people in both countries."

 

China, the world's second-largest economy, is South Africa's biggest trading partner and a "significant investor", Zuma said.

 

Total trade between China and South Africa totalled 201 billion rand ($21.7 billion) last year, he said, citing figures from South Africa's revenue agency.

 

Exports from South Africa to China stood at 89 billion rand, while imports from China to South Africa totalled 112 billion rand.

 

A "more equitable balance of trade" was now being sought, Zuma said.

 

The two countries signed a array of agreements on trade and investment, education, infrastructural development and coastal management.

 

The leaders then headed for Durban to meet their counterparts at the summit of the BRICS grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa which opens later Tuesday.

 

Xi expressed hope the talks between the five major emerging economies "will generate positive results and help elevate the cooperation between BRICS countries and African countries to a higher level."

 

From South Africa, Xi will travel to the Republic of Congo on the next leg of his first presidential foreign trip which began in Russia.

 

Xi's tour is being seen as a sign that China's drive for deeper economic ties with Africa will continue during his term.

 

 

 

 

 

VOITH Engineering Services has been awarded a contract worth around €7m to develop a low-floor LRV for Xiangtan Electric Manufacturing Group, China.

 

Voith says work was due to begin on the project at the end of March and is due to conclude by late-2014. The company will train 15 Xiangtan staff at its facility in Chemnitz, Germany, and will also be responsible for all manufacturing planning for the vehicles at the Chinese plant.

 

"The plan is to generate a complete line of vehicles from the low-floor tram now being developed that will meet various customer requirements in different Chinese regions," says manager for development and technology Dr Frank Salzwedel.

 

Voith Engineering Services has already developed a low-floor LRV concept for CNR.

 

 

 

 

 

 

JAPAN's Mitsubishi Electric Corporation says it has installed the world's first auxiliary power supply system incorporating silicon carbide power modules in a series-production train.

 

The modules are currently being fitted to Type 1000 cars being built for Tokyo Metro's Ginza Line. Testing is expected to start soon prior to the trains entering service in June.

 

Mitsubishi Electric says by incorporating silicon carbide power modules in auxiliary power supply systems it is able reduce power loss by 30% and cut transformer noise by 4dB due to a 35% improvement in the distortion rate of output voltage waveforms.

 

Compared with using silicon, silicon carbide enables the auxiliary power supply system to be 20% smaller and 15% lighter. The main specifications of the new system are a rated voltage of 600V dc, a two-level voltage-type pulse-width modulation (PWM) inverter, an output voltage of 140kVA, and natural air cooling.

 

The new auxiliary power supply systems use technologies developed for silicon carbide inverters which include high-voltage silicon carbide inverters for 600/750V dc Type 01 trains for the Ginza Line, which were introduced in February 2012, and for Type 15,000 1.5kV dc trains for Tokyo Metro's Tozai Line in January.

 

 

 

  

 

Apparently the debate as to whether or not high-speed rail is a cost effective way to travel hasn’t reached China. The country continues to go full speed ahead with its plans to connect its commercial centers with high-speed railways – 9,356 kilometers so far, and they don’t plan on slowing down anytime soon.

 

This past December China launched the connector between Beijing and Guangzhou. The 2,298 kilometer-long rail is the longest high-speed route in the world. That would be 1,427 miles in the US, and would span about the distance between Los Angeles and Dallas. The Beijing-Guangzhou line cut what used to be a 22 hour trip to just eight hours. The route is undoubtedly China’s most fruitful, connecting the capital to Guangzhou’s Pearl River Delta, a region that has shown an astonishing rate of economic growth – between 1980 and 2000 the Delta’s economy swelled more than eleven-fold. A major manufacturing hub and one of China’s most crowded regions, the Delta includes nine cities that are currently being connected with one-hundred and fifty major infrastructure projects including 10 routes of high-speed rail to connect the disparate cities into a single megacity four times the population of New York.

 

And then there’s the rest of China.

 

By 2015 (that’s just 2 more years!) China is projected to nearly double to 18,000 kilometers of high-speed rail. By 2020 they plan on expanding to 50,000 kilometers.

 

China’s high-speed passenger line already connects most of the country’s major cities. [Source: Wikipedia] The profusion of high-speed railways is already affecting the other high-speed mode of transportation. China’s three big airline carriers, Air China, China Southern Airlines and China Eastern Airlines, as well as others collectively reported losses for three months in a row – together, 1 billion yuan ($160 million) in the month of January. While other factors contributed to the losses, competition from high-speed rail has impacted demand enough that carriers have droppped many short-haul flights and increased the number of long-haul ones. Air China, for example, recently opened new Beijing-Geneva and Chengdu-Frankfurt routes last month in an effort to increase their market share in Europe. Carriers are also being forced into drastic ticket price reductions. According to South China Morning Post, promotional tickets are now being routinely offered at a discount of 90 percent or more, making them even cheaper than the cheapest seats available on many high-speed trains.

 

The use of high-speed rail in China continues to escalate despite the collision of two high-speed trains in Wenzhou in 2011. Officials blamed the collision on an overly-ambitious rate of expansion that led to “neglect of safety management.” The crash left left 40 dead, 172 injured and expedited the firing of China’s railway minister Liu Zhijun who was already facing corruption charges.

 

China’s ambitious plans will allow them to pull further ahead as the world leader in high-speed rail. Ground covered by their bullet trains have long since passed high-speed rail pioneer countries in Europe. In the United States, meanwhile, high-speed rail remains at a near standstill. In plain disagreement with pretty much the rest of the developed world, the US is slower than an 8th generation Honda Civic to adopt high-speed trains. Right now Amtrak’s Acela Express that runs the northeast corridor between Washington DC and Boston is the country’s sole high-speed rail service. Ohio, Wisconsin and Florida all rejected federal grants to build routes between 2010 and 2011. Florida’s governor Rick Scott said the projects were “too costly to taxpayers” and that “the risk far outweigh[ed] the benefits.”

 

But just weeks ago, nearly five years of battling a lawsuit that sought to keep the route from passing through certain cities, California has been given the go ahead on building a high-speed rail service between San Francisco and Los Angeles, a stretch of about 380 miles. The project is expected to cost $68 billion and be completed around 2028. If all projections are correct, the 600 or so kilometers laid down will take eight years longer than it would have taken China to build almost 48,000 kilometers.

 

A quarter of the world’s largest 500 urban areas are located in China, and the country’s urban population is expected to reach 900 million by 2030. It’s a big country, but clearly they want to shrink it through high-speed rail. If China’s economy comes anything close to surpassing that of the US – projected by some to occur in 2018 – surely the future will see there more manufacturing hubs like Pearl River Delta, a collection of cities that combine powers through high-speed links to become a kind of megacity. The 50,000 kilometers projection by 2020 seems, frankly, outrageously ambitious. But unlike the US, China seems single-minded in their positive thinking about high-speed rail, and no doubt they’re going to go at it with full speed to make it happen.

 

 

 

 

The 50 per cent speed increase on the high-speed rail from Harbin to Dalian, originally scheduled for April 1, is likely be postponed for operational and safety reasons.

 

The route passes through the northeast provinces of Liaoning and Jilin to the capital of Heilongjiang province, and experiences some of the coldest weather in China. When the service was launched in December, the trains were intended to operate at 200km/h in winter and 300km/h in summer, starting from April.

 

But some official train ticket agents in both cities said earlier this week they had received no official word that the trains would start operating at the higher speed. "We should have received instructions by now, but we haven't. So it is unlikely to happen," said one agent, without giving her name.

 

Speculation about the delay had been reported by local and state media, including the Dalian Evening News and the website of People's Daily this week.

 

The Harbin to Dalian route, which takes 5? hours at the slower speed, has been one of China's most troublesome high-speed rail projects.

 

Stretching more than 900 kilometres, it was the nation's most northerly high-speed line and faces extremely low temperatures. Harbin has the coldest, longest and most snowbound winters of any provincial capital. Its six-year construction cost more 95 billion yuan (HK$117 billion), more than 25 per cent over budget. Its project manager was detained by anti-corruption authorities two years ago, and the launch was delayed for months over concerns about the standard of construction.

 

Rail authorities blamed the weather for the latest delay.

 

An anonymous rail official told the People's Daily website that the rail line had been hit by 30 blizzards in its first three months of operation. Although there were no accidents, the weather in April could still be unpredictable, raising safety concerns.

 

"This year northeast China experienced more snowstorms and longer icing periods than usual," the official was quoted as saying.

 

"There is still no final decision that the weather in April will be suitable for raising the train speed. This is the most important reason for the delay."

 

The authorities also said that the central government's institutional reform to hive off the monolithic rail ministry into three different entities had created administrative issues that also affected the speed increase.

 

But Wang Mengshu, deputy chief engineer at the China Railway Tunnel Group who was familiar with the railway's construction, said yesterday that the line had suffered from poor management that led to some serious quality concerns.

 

The line was not suitable to run at its designed speed until those problems were resolved, he said.

 

"The construction management was desperate to cut costs," Wang said. "They cancelled the construction of many bridges and tunnels, laying the rails directly on ground that was vulnerable to ice."

 

The expansion of ice in soil can stretch and twist rail lines beyond their safety limit, he said. About a fourth of the line was laid on such soils.

 

But ice was not the only issue troubling the railway and threatening passenger safety.

 

An internal document obtained by 21st Century Business Herald from the rail authorities showed some sections of the rails were unevenly joined. At high speed, the bumpy joints could affect passenger comfort or even jeopardise safety.

 

Many drainage pipelines were also blocked due to design or construction problems.

 

Construction problems were so numerous and severe that the project drew a tirade of criticism from a former deputy rail minister at a meeting last summer, the newspaper said.

 

A rise in train speed, when implemented, will see ticket prices rise by 50 per cent. A second class ticket from Harbin to Dalian costs 123 yuan at present.

 

 

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Train traffic resumed on Wednesday on train tracks in Loudi City, central China's Hunan Province, where a rain-triggered mudslide caused a freight train to derail on Tuesday night.

 

Local railway authorities said no casualties have resulted from the accident.

 

About 800 cubic meters of mud and rock fell onto the track during the landslide that occurred at 9:18 p.m. Tuesday, causing three of the freight train's carriages to derail.

 

The accident cut off rail traffic on the Loudi-Shaoyang section of the railway, which runs from Zhanjiang City, Fujian Province, to Luoyang City, Henan Province. Ten passenger trains were stranded on the line.

 

A recent bout of heavy rain has affected most parts of Hunan Province. China's Central Meteorological Station forecast Wednesday morning that showers and strong rainfall will continue to hit parts of eastern and central China through this week.

 

 

 

 

China's decision to abolish its railway ministry - transfer operations and staff to a company, China Railway Corporation, and regulatory functions to the ministry of transport - inevitably raises questions over what India is doing with its own railways. Since the 1990s, China's railway system has seen stupendous growth, becoming in some ways the foremost railway system in the world. This has left India's railway system, which was ahead of China's at the time of Independence, far behind.

 

Through the 1990s, China added over 1,000 kilometres of new track every year, whereas India added 661 km in the entire decade. Massive investment and spectacular growth made the Chinese railways a power centre and gave rise to enormous corruption. The recent drastic overhaul, in response to this, has also led to the dismissal of the railway minister and start of investigations.

 

There is wide agreement that the Indian Railways also needs a drastic overhaul at the top so as to grow sustainably in tandem with the rest of the economy. The best possible scenario would be for the Railways to serve as a catalyst enabling the Indian economy to return to the high growth achieved in the 2003-08 period, instead of becoming an impediment in the way of the economy's return to high growth.

 

The Railways' inability to change and grow rapidly, except for the five years (2004-09) under Lalu Prasad, is not because of lack of expert advice. As early as in 1994, an expert committee under Prakash Tandon, former Hindustan Lever chief, made comprehensive proposals for change. This was followed by the McKinsey report prepared on behalf of the Asian Development Bank in 1997. Thereafter, there have been two status reports, in 1998 and 2002 under Nitish Kumar; a white paper and a Vision 2020 in 2009 under Mamata Banerjee; and, most recently, two reports in 2012, one led by Anil Kakodkar on safety and the other led by Sam Pitroda on modernisation. They all address the same issue, how to get the Railways going.

 

The Tandon report highlighted the idea that the Railway Board should represent customer segments, and so have members looking after areas such as bulk freight, passenger and intermodal services. There would also be positions for deliverers who made these services possible - moving assets (production and maintenance of rolling stock); finance and planning; and human resource development, research and quality. Even today you have a member traffic - as though handling all traffic, passenger or freight, requires the same approach.

 

Perhaps the most revolutionary recommendation was to end the 10 separate cadres of the Railways and institute a single Indian Railway Administrative Service. After training, recruits would be placed in different functional departments based on their needs, and not according to technical disciplines. Departments such as rolling stock, workshop and finance would absorb those with appropriate technical qualifications. This is much needed, as departmentalism (living in silos) and inter-cadre rivalry are the biggest hurdles the Railways faces.

 

The McKinsey report went deeper, into mindsets. A presentation on the report said: "One of Indian Railways' main enemies is fashion… Railways are seen as unfashionable because in the developed world, railways are past their prime… Despite the inherent advantage of rail, the debate on the transport sector has focused on roads." The railways in India have to project themselves as a "sunrise industry". Run by non-IAS (Indian Administrative Service) officers with minimal involvement of the finance ministry, the Railways has to cease to be "inward-looking". They need to "reach out … establish links with the ministry of finance, secretaries of other important ministries … and public institutions such as the NCAER [National Council of Applied Economic Research] …."

 

Since then the railways around the world have had rejuvenation, as concerns over global warming have made the private motor car the bad boy and rail commute an eco-friendly option. But in India today the railways pay more for diesel than SUV owners do. The McKinsey report said the Railways should grow "at least as fast as industrial GDP" or at "double digit growth". After over 10 years of additional learning, the Vision 2020 document says: "...the Indian Railways must achieve annual growth of 10 per cent over the next 10 years."

 

Today, thankfully, raising passenger fares has been delinked from the budget. The next act should be to get rid of the railway budget, which is used by ministers to grandstand and announce unaffordable new passenger trains and for sundry MPs to shout and demonstrate. Thereafter the Railways can be turned into a fully government-owned public sector enterprise that casts its accounts according to the Companies Act, making it comparable with other enterprises. The rest has to be left to God overruling human short-sightedness.

 

My first metro ride was a memorable event, I was surprised how many people there were and the efficiency of the schedule, there is never a long wait for a train.

 

I saw the travellers in worlds of their own but moving together and adjusting to each other, getting on and off, sitting and standing, but very little talking to anybody but the companions they came with. Even though the stations names are written in an English style, they are very strange to the inexperienced Western ear, Long Cao Road ,Cao Xi Road on line 3 are two of the great challenges; when I first came to China I could not remember the name of the stop nearest my hotel for about two days.

 

The unfamiliar names also give the Westerner a feeling of being in a strange and wonderful land, Line 10 has some wonderful examples: Youdian, Xincun, HongQiao Road, Xintiandi, Laoximen are few of many. These very names suggest an idea of the Orient as a mystical and wonderful place. There are names that reflect Shanghai's traditions in politics, science and culture: People's square, East and West Nanjing Road Jing'an Temple, Tongji University, Science & Technology Museum, Zhangjiang High Technology Park. The modernity and history of Shanghai, and the dynamism of its people are all encapsulated in a metro journey.

 

The one below is my observations of travel on the Shanghai subway, written as guide to someone who has never used it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chief minister Prithviraj Chavan on Monday announced in the legislative Assembly that the most-awaited monorail and metro projects in Mumbai will start functioning from this year. He also said that new projects worth `32,000 crore for the development of the Mumbai will be launched soon. He was replying to the two-day debate on motion of thanking the governor K Sankaranarayanan for his address to the joint session of both the Houses of the state legislature.

 

The chief minister said, “This year, MMRDA projects worth `5,000 crore will be inaugurated. These include the monorail, metro and the Eastern Freeway projects. Monorail trials have already started. Both monorail and metro projects will commence from this year.” Similarly, new projects worth `32,000 crore would be launched soon.

 

He said, “The 22-km long Mumbai Trans-Harbour Link (MTHL) project worth `9,630 crore is also on track. The Centre has approved Viability Gap Funding (VGF) of `1,920 crore, as a result of which we have started the tendering process and five consortiums have been shortlisted for the project.”

 

Mr Chavan stated that octroi will be scrapped in Mumbai and other municipal corporations across the state this year. “Octroi was levied only in Maharashtra and Ethiopia across the globe, therefore, the government has decided to scrap octroi in Mumbai, Thane, Pune, Nagpur and Pimpri-Chinchwad from this year. Instead, Local Body Tax (LBT) will be introduced.”

 

Currently, 19 ‘D’ class and only one ‘C’ class municipal corporations are having LBT.

 

Informing the House about the government’s stand on the demand of houses for mill workers, the CM said, “We are sensitive towards the demand of mill workers. About 6,995 homes were ready. The process of allotment is also going on and 7,000-8,000 more homes can be built. However, the government has received around 1.5 lakh applications from mill workers.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mumbai’s first Metro Rail project, which is being built between Versova, Andheri and Ghatkopar is likely to miss its sixth deadline.

 

The MMRDA had recently fixed a deadline of May 6 this year to open part of its services between Versova and the Airport station.

 

While the project is scheduled for completion in the next two months, only 76 per cent work on 12 stations and 92 per cent of the civil work has been completed so far. The information was revealed by S.R. Patil, chief engineer of Mumbai Metro-1, following an RTI query filed by activist Anil Galgali.

 

Work on the Metro Rail project — undertaken by the MMRDA in consultation with Mumbai Metro One Private limited (MMOPL) — began over five years ago on February 8, 2008. Since then, the project has missed five deadlines. The various deadlines that have been missed by the MMOPL, are as follows — July 1, 2010, September 2, 2010, July 3, 2011, March 5, 2012 and November 5, 2012.

 

The RTI reply further states that the MMRDA would not suffer any financial loss if the project deadline is missed, as any cost escalation in the project would be borne by the MMOPL When contacted, the spokesperson of the MMOPL said, “We received a complete Right of Way for the project in February 2012. However, we still overcame various ground challenges to complete around 99 per cent of the civil structure work.” Another officer on condition of anonymity said that the project will be completed by August 2013.

 

 

 

 

 

Promoters of Istanbul’s 2020 Olympic bid on Tuesday promised to develop the city’s public transport network to reduce traffic problems by a third over the next seven years — if they are awarded the event.

 

“In 2020, congestion-related problems will be reduced by 30 percent. We will do our best to avoid congestion,” the deputy secretary-general of the city’s authority in charge of transport, Muzzafer Hacimustafaoglu, told reporters.

 

“All over the world there is congestion in large cities. This is also a reality for Istanbul. The Olympic Games will happen in summer and in summer the number of cars is reduced by 20 percent.

 

“Our investment in public transportation will increase dramatically. This will be another plus,” Hacimustafaoglu said on the third day of a visit to the city by the International Olympic Committee’s bid evaluation commission.

 

Some $9.8 billion (7.6 billion euros) has been ringfenced to develop roads and public transport infrastructure, including a third bridge over the Bosphorus, as well as a seven-line subway tunnel linking the city’s European and Asian shores.

 

Other measures envisaged include encouraging the use of mass transit systems rather than private cars, flexible working hours and “special charging” for peak travel periods when congestion is a problem.

 

Transport is considered one of the weak points of Istanbul’s bid as it goes up against Tokyo and Madrid for the right to host the 2020 Games at an IOC meeting in the Argentinian capital Buenos Aires on September 7.

 

The Turkish city has failed on four previous occasions to be awarded the Olympics. Success at the fifth time of asking would take the Games to a Muslim-majority country for the first time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

India has agreed to a plan in which Japan will provide ￥220 billion in aid to build new infrastructure in the South Asian country.

 

At a meeting Tuesday in Tokyo, Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and his Indian counterpart, Salman Khurshid, also agreed to promote cooperation in ensuring maritime safety and security through joint exercises, while enhancing a bilateral political dialogue and a trilateral discussion involving Japan, the United States and India, Kishida told reporters.

 

The aid will be part of Japan’s multifaceted efforts to strengthen cooperation with India as China exercises greater military and economic clout.

 

“We hope to deepen and develop a strategic and global partnership (with India) by building a close cooperative relationship,” Kishida said at the outset of his meeting with Khurshid.

 

The yen-denominated loan package totaling ￥220.46 billion consists of four projects, including a freight railway project connecting New Delhi and Mumbai, and a subway project in southern India.

 

Separately, Japan decided to provide India with loans of ￥71 billion for the construction of an underground railway in Mumbai, Kishida said, adding that the foreign ministers also agreed to advance cooperation on a high-speed railway project.

 

They agreed to promote negotiations on a bilateral civilian nuclear energy cooperation pact, he said.

 

Khurshid praised Japan’s handling of the Senkaku territorial dispute with China, saying Tokyo’s emphasis on dialogue was an example of mature diplomacy, according to a Japanese official.

 

Kishida said that while China’s increasingly robust maritime activities are a common concern to the region, Japan intends to engage China in dialogue from a “big-picture” perspective.