Japan makes a safety pitch for high-speed rail job

Faced with strong competition from China, officials speak of shinkansen's perfect record over 51 years.

PETALING JAYA: Japan has showed off the perfect safety record of its shinkansen bullet trains over 51 years as it made a pitch to build the proposed Kuala Lumpur-Singapore high-speed railway line, against strong competition from China.

Executives of East Japan Railway Company made a presentation to Malaysian officials yesterday by highlighting the safety and maintenance record of the shinkansen network, Singapore’s Straits Times newspaper reported.

“We are confident that we would be able to contribute to the Malaysia-Singapore HSR project with our experience and technology,” said Mr Yuji Fukasawa, executive vice-president of East Japan Railway Company, better known as JR East, in his country.

China is also making a strong bid for the project through the state-owned China Railway Group which has announced a US$2 billion investment in the Bandar Malaysia property development in Kuala Lumpur. The high-speed rail would run from Bandar Malaysia to Jurong East in Singapore.

The competition between the rail operators of the two East Asian countries mirrors that of a high-speed rail project in Indonesia. Japan lost the bid last year when the Indonesian government decided the project would be carried out on a business-to-business basis, thus denying the Japanese government a role in providing funds or loan guarantees.

The Japanese presentation yesterday was made at a symposium to showcase Japan’s shinkansen technology.

Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said the shinkansen’s record of no deaths in its 51-year history was something the KL-Singapore line should emulate.

The project is still in discussion, but Land Public Transport Commission Chairman Syed Hamid Albar said that an agreement could be reached by the middle of the year.

High-speed rail services began in China in 2007 and there are now 19,000km of track in service, the largest network in the world. At least 40 people were reported killed in 2011 when two high-speed trains collided in Zhejiang province.