Link: China challenges Japanese bullet train supremacy
China challenges Japanese bullet train supremacy
Japan's proudly held and carefully protected supremacy in the development and production of highspeed train systems is being challenged by a new entrant in this small field of global competitors: China.
The Tokyo government and Japan's bullet train rail companies find themselves in the novel and uncomfortable position of having to aggressively market their product and -- more sensitively -- begin exporting their expertise in high-speed rail systems.
China's appearance from nowhere as a dominant player in this rarefied market has intensified competition among bullet train producers which previously included only Japan's Shinkansen, Germany's Siemens Velaro and France's TGV at the top end of the high-speed train market.
In the last few years, Beijing has invested heavily in developing highspeed rail and bullet train technology. The government's economic stimulus package produced late in 2008 to try to combat the global recession included $100 billion for railway development.
A high-speed train is defined as one that travels faster than 250 kilometres an hour on purpose-built new track or 200 kilometres an hour on existing track.
Even though China opened its first high-speed passenger service between Beijing and Tianjin only in 2008, by 2012 it will have more high-speed rail tracks than the rest of the world combined.
And already China's state-owned CSR Sifang has its eyes fixed on the export market.
At the moment the big prize is the development of high-speed rail systems in the United States, and it is there that China and Japan are facing off.
The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama has allotted $13 billion for the building of 11 highspeed rail lines in various parts of the country as part of his Green New Deal program.
An early contract attracting the Japanese is a $1.25-billion project to build a 120-kilometre high-speed rail link between Tampa and Orlando in Florida, with the prospect of an eventual 570-kilometre link-up with Miami.
There's a plan for a 1,300-kilometre high-speed rail line in California.
Then there's the prospect of linking Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, Md., with the emerging super-technology of fast trains, magnetic levitation, known as maglev.
Maglev trains achieve very high speeds because they float on a series of magnets embedded in the track and therefore have no friction.
Much of the development work on maglev trains in the last 40 years has been in Germany -- with Ontario attempting unsuccessfully to enter the market with a joint venture with Krauss-Maffei of Munich in the early 1970s.
Shanghai now has the world's fastest operational maglev system, taking passengers the 25 kilometres to Pudong airport in under eight minutes.
At the end of last month, Japan's transport minister, Seiji Maehara, and Yoshiyuki Kasai, chairman of the Central Japan Railway Company known as JR Tokai, led a team of railway experts to the U.S.
Both the Japanese and Chinese companies are proposing to set up manufacturing operations in the U.S. to meet Washington's insistence that the bulk of the building -- and therefore most of the jobs -- takes place in America.
The Chinese have set up a joint venture company with General Electric to invest in Chinese rail expansion in return for using Chinese technology in bids for the projects in the U.S.
At the moment JR Tokai is promoting its N700-I bullet trains, which are in regular use in Japan and which run at top speeds of over 300 kilometres an hour.
But in order to beat off the Chinese competition as well as other entrants from France, Germany, the U.S. and Bombardier of Canada, JR Tokai is considering entering its own cutting-edge maglev bullet train.
Known as the MLX01, this train is still in its testing phase, but in 2003 achieved the world's fastest train run when it was clocked at 581 kilometres an hour.
Last week U.S. Transport Secretary Ray Lahood visited JR Tokai's test track west of Tokyo and took a ride on the MLX01.
He said he was impressed and added that Washington's only stipulation for obtaining contracts for the building of planned high-speed intercity links is that railway companies should come to the U.S., use American facilities and hire American workers.
But JR Tokai has been battling rising costs and shrinking revenues from declining passenger traffic. So it has no current plans to open a maglev line in Japan.
Now JR Tokai is facing the cold reality that unless it starts selling its maglev bullet trains overseas it may not be able to introduce these trains in Japan and may well lose its technological edge to other companies.
jmanthorpe@vancouversun.com
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