Posted on 10/07/2010 3:33:06 PM PDT by Willie Green
PARIS — In an effort to prepare for competition on cross-Channel rail traffic, Eurostar said Thursday that it had awarded a hotly sought contract to upgrade its aging fleet of fast trains to a Germany company, Siemens.
The announcement did not sit well in Paris, which had been backing a French champion, and officials sharply criticized the decision.
The £700 million, or $1.1 billion, contract will provide Eurostar — which is majority owned by the French state through its ownership of the national railway S.N.C.F. — with 10 of Siemens’ sleek new Velaro e320 trains. Siemens beat out the A.G.V. trains made by Alstom, the French industrial conglomerate. Designed by the Italian firm Pininfarina, the trains will be capable of traveling on other networks, as Eurostar seeks to extend its own reach into Germany and the Netherlands.
The Eurostar e320, as it is known, will carry more than 900 passengers at a top speed of 320 kilometers, or 200 miles, per hour, compared with the 750 passengers the current generation carries, at speeds of up to 300 kilometers per hour, Eurostar said. It will also have onboard WiFi and entertainment systems. The company hopes the new fleet will better position it for the arrival of Deutsche Bahn, the German operator that hopes to start offering service from points in Germany to London by the end of 2013, when Eurostar’s monopoly ends.
Nicolas Petrovic, Eurostar’s chief executive, said Thursday in London that the decision to award the contract to Siemens was based on “technical, commercial and pricing criteria.”
“It was a very competitive tender and at the end Siemens made the best overall offer,” Mr. Petrovic said. “There’s nothing else behind that but commercial benefit to Eurostar.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
A German company, good to see our borrowed tax dollars are creating jobs in Europe.
Two words: Crony Capitalism ..
What’s long and hard and built by Siemens?
I hate their enviro-whacko ads. All they care about is making as much $ as possible from politically correct projects. I would not buy anything from them.
Willie Green Happy Choo-Choo thread.
Promoting 19th Century technology for the 21st Century.
High speed rail technology is hardly 19th century.
We’re talking about moving 900 people at half the average speed of regional jets and 4X the average speed of cars.
Besides the speed gains, the entire operation can run on electricity(thus reducing the reliance on imported oil) and uses 1/20th the energy of Auto-Travel per lb per mile.
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