Cities invite bids for urban rail vehicles

(Ecns.cn)--The three Chinese cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Chongqing will open their bidding processes in succession this April for providers of urban rail vehicles, and the tender scale for each city is expected to be 600 cars, according to reports on Monday.

On April 13, Chongqing had already started its first round of invitations to tender for its subway line 4, at a scale of 210 rail vehicles. China South Locomotive and Rolling Stock Corporation Limited (CSR) and China Northern Locomotive and Rolling Stock Corporation Limited (CNR) are the two bidders.

Beijing, Shanghai and Chongqing expect their subway traffic mileages will respectively reach 561, 739 and 196.6 kilometers by 2015, and by2020, the numbers will be 1050 kilometers, 970 and 364 kilometers.

In the last two years, CSR and CNR have competed fiercely in the urban rail vehicle market. In 2011, CSR's net profit jumped 52.96 percent year-on-year to 3.86 billion yuan (US$614 million), while CNR's net profit surged 55.16 percent year-on-year, reaching 2.99 billion yuan (US$474.6 million).