High-Speed Train to Fly to St. Pete in 3 Hours
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Источник: The Moscow Times
Автор: Lyuba Pronina
Ньюсмейкер от РБС: Коновалов Е.Н. - директор департамента консалтинга ЗАО "АКГ "РБС"
Дата: 24/03/2005 |
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By 2008, the fastest way to fly from Moscow to St. Petersburg will be by train — three hours from city center to city center.
With the wheels greased by the countries’ top leaders last December, Russian Railways, or RZD, and Germany’s Siemens Transportation Systems expect to drum up a deal as early as next month that will make a 250- kilometer-per-hour train a reality.
Western engineering and Russian production will adapt Germany’s high-speed InterCity Express trains to fit Russia’s wider tracks.
Both parties are tight-lipped on details ahead of sealing the agreement, but they see it as “an earnest and long-term“ link-up, according to an RZD statement.
“We think that Siemens is coming to the Russian market for serious and long-term cooperation,“ RZD president Gennady Fadeyev was quoted as saying in the company statement.
Siemens has completely agreed to conditions set forth by Russia, RZD said, following a pre-contract meeting earlier this month between Fadeyev and STS president Hans Schabert.
The most important conditions provide for production to take place mainly in Russia and include Russian suppliers and project partners.
In Fadeyev’s vision, domestic production and supply of components should grow from 30 percent in 2007–2008 to 80 percent in 2015.
Thirty Russian companies will be invited to take part in the new project, Fadeyev has said, among them production plants in Kolomna and Novocherkassk, as well as the Moscow Locomotive Repair Plant.
A joint venture will be set up among Siemens, Russian manufacturers and investment banks to finance the project, whose cost is estimated to grow to $2 billion.
The venture will develop, test and arrange investment for production. The Russian model will have to be wider than the German trains in order to fit Russia’s tracks, which are wider than Europe’s.
RZD’s role in the venture has yet to be specified, said Andrei Garanichev, adviser to RZD vice president Valentin Gapanovich, but once the Russian ICE has been designed and built, the company will purchase 60 trains. The price has not been specified but will hover around 20 million euros ($26 million) per train, Garanichev said.
RZD has promised that within the next three years, it will upgrade the track to handle the high-speed traffic, equaling the investment to be made by the Siemens joint venture.
The technical specifications on the train are yet to be worked out, Garanichev said.
The new service will run at first between Moscow and St. Petersburg and between St. Petersburg and Helsinki. RZD is eyeing such potential destinations as Nizhny Novgorod, Rostov-on-Don and Kiev.
“We have to see how popular the pilot Moscow-St. Petersburg route will be,“ Garanichev said. “But with three hours between the center of Moscow and the center of St. Petersburg, we expect half the passengers who fly to switch to rail.“
Aeroflot operates 52 weekly flights between Moscow and St. Petersburg, but even though the flight lasts just over an hour, it still takes extra time to get to and from the airports, making up for the difference.
Currently, the fastest train between St. Petersburg and Moscow takes 4 1/2 hours.
RZD’s pending contract with Siemens will be the final step for Russia’s own high-speed train. The Sokol prototype was built at the Transmash plant in the Leningrad region and was to enter service in 2002, but the project was abandoned after being deemed unfit for high-speed use on Russian tracks.
“By choosing Siemens, we recognize that our technology is lagging behind,“ said Igor Nikolayev, an expert with the FBK consulting firm.
“And RZD is right not to be waiting for our own technology to develop. Borrowing is a wise move.“
Nikolayev said that the RZD-Siemens contract will be a winning deal for both parties.
“Siemens seems to be ready to transfer technology, and while the Western European market has limitations, Russia offers new opportunities for the company to supply its product,“ he said.
“RZD’s experience with Russian plants has been negative. The plants simply do not have the technology to make these trains of aluminum alloys,“ said Yevgeny Konovalov, head of the consulting department at Business Systems Development, an RZD adviser.
He said that upgrading infrastructure for the new train will not be a problem for RZD, but “if they want to run a service to Kiev, Ukrainian infrastructure will have to be upgraded too.“
Louis Thompson, a former railways adviser at the World Bank and currently a consultant on rail issues in Europe and China, said that prospects for the ICE line are good.
“The distance is at the upper end of the typical high-speed rail distance, but the demographics are good, and the lack of good highway connections combined with the weather problems for air [travel] in winter means that rail has a strong market potential,“ he said.
A potential connection to Western Europe may not immediately be in the cards, however.
“Given the distances and the change of railway gauge, I would initially be concerned about the economic feasibility,» Thompson said.
The Siemens agreement will follow another contract, signed earlier this month by RZD, Transmashholding and Berlin-based Bombardier Transportation for the production of EP10 dual-voltage passenger locomotives.
The $16 million deal covers the production of 12 such locomotives through 2006. The first EP10 train will run between Moscow and Kiev, and future destinations will include Smolensk, Minsk and Nizhny Novgorod.
