Taiwan's bullet train ready to leave Japanese factory

A "bullet train" being built for Taiwan in Japan is set to roll out of the factory this coming week, Taiwan's rail operator said yesterday.

"The debut of the 700T locomotive and carriages will be a milestone in the project," a spokeswoman for the Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC, 台灣高鐵) told reporters.

Taiwan's Transport Minister Lin Ling-san (林陵三) and THSRC chairwoman Nita Ing (殷琪) will attend the ceremony in Kobe on Friday, the spokeswoman said.

Japan also attached great importance to the mulit-billion-dollar project as it is the first time Japan has exported the high-speed bullet train, also known as Shinkansen.

A Japanese consortium of seven companies signed the deal with THSRC for the supply of the core system -- trains and carriages, signalling system, electrification system, communications system and operation control system -- at a price of US$3.02 billion in 2000 ahead of the Eurotrain consortium.

The seven Japanese companies involved in the project are Mitsui Corp, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Mitsubishi Corp., Marubeni Corp, Sumitomo Corp, Kawasaki Heavy Industries and Toshiba Electric.

The first train is scheduled to be shipped to Taiwan in the middle of the year and set to be tested in the third quarter.

The 345km high-speed rail linking Taipei and Kaohsiung is slated to begin commercial operation in October next year.

The system, with the trains running at an average speed of 300kph, is expected to transport 100 million passengers a year.

The service would cut the journey time between Taipei and Kaohsiung from about four hours to an hour and a half.

In 1998 THSRC won the US$440 billion contract to build the system under Taiwan's largest ever BOT (build-operate-transfer) project, under which the rail system will be managed by the THSRC for 35 years before is is turned over to state control.