After 150 years, the Chinese are again looking to play a major role in building American railroads, with a consortium of state-owned companies bidding for the first high-speed rail project in the United States.
The consortium comprising the Shanghai Railway Bureau, China Railway Construction Corporation (Hong Kong- and Shanghai-listed CRCC), CSR Corporation (also listed in Hong Kong and Shanghai) and the Third Railway Survey and Design Institute (majority-owned by the Railways Ministry) submitted an expression of interest in March to bid for California's high-speed rail project.
This move was revealed at the High Speed Rail Asia conference in Hong Kong yesterday by Qian Guifeng, deputy director of the US Railway Project Working Group, the Ministry of Railways' unit promoting Chinese railway firms in the US.
If the consortium won the tender, the bureau would operate the line, CRCC would build the track, CSR would supply the rolling stock and the institute would design the high-speed project, Qian said.
Consortia from Japan, France, Spain and South Korea had also submitted expressions of interest to bid for the project, she said.
Alstom of France, Britain's Virgin Rail Group and Amtrak of the US have expressed interest in the project, according to the California High-Speed Rail Authority's website.
The 1,290-kilometre line from north to south California will cost US$45 billion, of which US$12 billion is expected to come from private-public partnerships.