Transrapid seals Shanghai maglev deal

BERLIN, Germany (CNN) -- German consortium Transrapid expects to sign a contract in China Monday for a high-speed railway connecting Shanghai's new Pudong airport with the city centre.

Transrapid said this would be the first commercial deal for its futuristic magnetic levitation railway technology, which has struggled to win contracts due to its high cost.

Maglev trains avoid the friction of wheeled trains and can reach speeds above 500 km/h (310 mph).

"The Transrapid railway to be built by the end of 2003 will mean the 30 kilometer journey between the international airport at Pudong and the city center of Shanghai can be travelled in less than 10 minutes," the consortium said in a statement released in Berlin Sunday.

The consortium, a partnership between the German government and industrial backers ThyssenKrupp AG and Siemens AG, did not say how much it would be paid for the project, which could be worth billions of marks.

DaimlerChrysler AG rail unit Adtranz was also part of the consortium, but has said it wants to withdraw from the project and is no longer involved in the Chinese deal.

"This is the opening of the world market for us, a real breakthrough," a Transrapid spokesman told Reuters, but declined to say how much the deal was worth.

An initial 1.6 million mark ($733,000) deal was signed in July last year by Chinese Prime Minister Zhu Rongji and Transrapid, but it only covered a feasibility study. The magnetic levitation train would be able to reach a speed of 500 km/h (310 mph ), although it will average about 430 km/h (270 mph).

China's Zhu said he "felt a little dizzy" last July during a 407 km/h (255 mph) ride on a test stretch of the train in Germany. Zhu said then the Shanghai project could lead to a total investment of some $20 billion.

Germany will offer China aid in the form of loans and grants of up to one billion marks to help finance the Transrapid project, a German government source said last month.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder had been a fan of Transrapid's modern technology, but his ecologist Green coalition partners have criticised the government's willingness to pump billions of marks into an apparent white elephant.

Last year, Germany scrapped plans to build the first Transrapid link in the country between Berlin and the port of Hamburg after eight years of planning and development.

Transrapid said on Sunday the Shanghai deal should give a boost to other mooted maglev projects, as well as much-longer stretches under consideration in China including a 1300-kilometer (800-mile) connection between Shanghai and Beijing.

Japan, which has been running its high-speed "bullet" trains since 1964, also is working on a maglev train. Its experimental five-car train set reached 552 km/h (343 mph) in April 1999, a record for a train with people onboard.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Transrapid International
Japan Railway Technical Research Institute
Shanghai Government

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