By Robert Wright, Transport Correspondent
Published: October 1 2010 13:49 | Last updated: October 1 2010 19:54
Eurostar looks poised to defy French government opposition by becoming the first affiliate of SNCF, France’s state-owned train operator, to order non-French high-speed trains.
A board meeting on Friday afternoon of Eurostar, which is controlled by SNCF, decided to press on towards a final contract, likely to be worth more than $826m, for Velaro-D trains from Germany’s Siemens. Eurostar runs high-speed trains between the UK and mainland Europe.
Paris has been working hard in the past week to persuade the tunnel’s safety authorities to overturn a change in rules, people involved said. The change made it possible for the first time for the German-built trains to use the tunnel.
SNCF and its international joint ventures – which include Eurostar and Thalys, which runs from Paris to Brussels, Cologne and Amsterdam – previously ordered high-speed trains from Alstom, widely seen in France as a national champion. Alstom builds SNCF’s flagship 300kph TGV trains.
Eurostar selected the Velaro-D, the latest version of Germany’s ICE high-speed train family, over Alstom’s AGV, as its preferred option in June, but the deal became public only on Friday. The Velaro-D and AGV are now seen as Europe’s leading competitors for large high-speed train orders. SNCF has a record of buying trains built by non-French companies, including Canada’s Bombardier, but previous orders have been built at the contractors’ French factories.
Two of the parties involved told the Financial Times that French authorities were exerting pressure for a renewal of a recently-removed ban on the use of the tunnel by trains with “distributed traction”, where electrical equipment is hidden under the floor and the motors are distributed throughout the train.
Until earlier this year, the tunnel safety rules said all trains using it had to have electrical equipment and motors concentrated in power cars at either end, the arrangement on Euro-star’s existing trains, built in the early 1990s.
Both parties believed it reflected official frustration that Eurostar had opted for the German product. “What they are saying is that they will not endorse trains with distributed traction going through the tunnel,” one person familiar with Eurostar’s position said of the French authorities’ stance.
An international trainmaker confirmed the French authorities had been campaigning on the issue.
Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s president, has regularly expressed his pride in his pivotal role, when economy minister, in arranging a state-backed rescue for Alstom when it was in danger of collapse in 2004. When Alstom unveiled the AGV in 2008, Mr Sarkozy questioned the right of Alstom’s competitors to sell trains in France.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5696688c-cd4c-11df-ab20-00144feab49a.html
フランス政府の反対を退けて、ドイツ製の動力分散型高速列車Velaro-Dを、次期ユーロスターに選択しようとしているようです。
最後の障壁が、ユーロトンネルを走る列車は、機関車方式でなければならないとした条項の修正だとか。しかし、それもアルストムのAGVも同様の障害になっているので、その条項は廃止しないと駄目だとか。。。
時代遅れの機関車方式も、もう終わりか？^^