French railroad to take bids from Japanese train makers

0 Comments | AFP, October, 2006

PARIS (AFP) — The French national railway SNCF will invite Japanese groups to bid on contracts for its next generation of high-speed trains, a newspaper has reported but the company immediately played this down. The daily Le Parisien quoted the director of high-speed operations at the group's France Europe Voyagers branch, Frank Bernard, as saying Wednesday: "The tender for our next generation of TGV will be open to Japanese manufacturers.

"Prices offered by Japanese industrial groups are very competitive," Bernard added after returning from a 10-day trip to Japan. But an SNCF spokesman later told AFP: "So far, discussions with Japanese manufacturers have been limited to exchanges of information and missions to study the Japanese high-speed train. "The SNCF will need to...