US transport sec wraps up train tour in China

[May 14, 2010]  SHANGHAI (AP) -- U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood took a spin in a General Motors Co. electric concept vehicle during a visit Friday to the World Expo in Shanghai, wrapping up an Asian trip that has focused heavily on high-speed trains.

LaHood's visits to Japan and China come as both countries compete alongside leading European train operators for billions of dollars in high-speed train contacts in the United States.

In Japan, LaHood rode a bullet train and a maglev in visits to rail operators JR East and Japan Central Railways. He also visited Hong Kong, which has approved a controversial $8.6 billion plan to link the territory with China's fast-growing national high-speed rail network.

In Shanghai, LaHood kept his public events to a minimum, only appearing at GM's joint Expo pavilion with partner Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp. to ride in the EN-V (short for Electric Networked-Vehicle), a two-wheel two-seater that is the linchpin of GM's futuristic vision for making vehicles safer, energy efficient and emission-free.

U.S. officials said LaHood preferred to keep the Shanghai leg of his trip "low profile," and he made no public comments.

But clearly there is strong interest here in China's prospects for competing successfully, for the first time, for big infrastructure projects in the U.S. like the high-speed rail systems.

Beijing is working hard to develop markets overseas, while it pursues its own plan to build a 16,000-mile (25,000-kilometer) high-speed rail network by 2020 in a 2 trillion yuan ($300 billion) project it hopes will spur economic and technology development.

Washington has awarded $8.5 billion to jump-start 13 regional high-speed rail projects, with $2.5 billion more to come this year and hundreds of billions needed before lines are up and running. The U.S. has almost no expertise of its own, though it is requiring that much of the work be done using American labor.

Japan has some of the most advanced trains in the world, but has had little success in selling its systems to countries that are upgrading old lines to high-speed systems. There has been hopeful speculation that Tokyo's close political ties with Washington might provide an advantage over rivals like Germany's Siemens AG and France's Alstom SA -- as well as the Chinese.

China has relied heavily on Japanese and German technology to improve its own railways and build new high-speed lines. Shanghai's magnetic levitation, or maglev, train was built by a German consortium that included Thyssenkrupp AG and Siemens AG.

[Associated Press; By ELAINE KURTENBACH]

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