The partnership with China can look for Hungarian high-speed rail
Negotiations between the Hungarian and Chinese governments on the deepening of China-Europe high-speed rail cooperation will soon begin, the Ministry of Innovation and Technology’s Communications Department (ITM) informed VG. In connection with our paper, he was interested in the publication of a Prime Minister’s resolution at the end of last year, authorizing the start of negotiations in the first place, and at the same time expressing its agreement to an agreement between the Government of Hungary and the Government of the People’s Republic of China. The final wording of this will be approved by the Cabinet.
ITM said that the content of the agreement would be jointly defined, and the parties would state that the document, which could be finalized this year without naming specific projects, would provide a general framework for deepening bilateral rail links. This is necessary because the countries of the Visegrad Cooperation (V4) would also be connected to the development of high-speed rail (HSR). On the Hungarian side, the Budapest – Bratislava, Budapest – Prague, Budapest – Warsaw, Budapest – Cluj-Napoca projects are known so far, but their technological background is an open question.
It is no exaggeration to say that HSR is one of the status symbols of China, a kind of demonstration of strength in relation to the development of the Far Eastern country.
In less than a decade, Beijing has built the world’s densest HSR network, about forty thousand kilometers, two-thirds of the world’s total high-speed rail network, and has been exporting this knowledge to the U.S. market since 2011. broke in. It may now rightly arise that even Chinese technology may appear behind domestic HSR investments.
However, to the best of our knowledge, this is not the case at present and the proposed agreement does not have a branch to the HSR V4 projects. Hungary completed the feasibility study for the domestic section of high-speed rail in the spring of 2021. Since then, no decision has been made to provide background technology.
ITM reminded that in the spirit of its policy of opening up to the East, Hungary is constantly looking for new opportunities to expand its cooperation with Chinese partners.
One of the key goals of the railway program is to make Hungary the center of freight transport, logistics and distribution in Central Europe, taking advantage of the opportunities arising from its geographical location. The conditions and means of making better use of transit capacity are to involve us as much as possible in the larger traffic between Europe and China. The government is therefore working to connect continents and regions with modern and secure logistics solutions
They wrote.
By rail, the expansion of the capacity of the Budapest-Belgrade line, which is already under construction, serves this purpose. Developments in the Chinese partner will reduce passenger travel times by less than half between the two capitals. It will provide the fastest transport route by touching the seaports in Greece between Western Europe and the Far East. In this connection, the Ministry noted that it was worthwhile to create an increased capacity at Záhony for rail shipments from China interested in the mainland, and from there to the Győr-Sopron area bypassing the transport route.
It can be built from the northern section
The FeSo Consortium has won the China-Hungarian Railway Nonprofit Ltd. public procurement for the development of the railway line between Ferencváros station and Soroksár. For the implementation of the project representing the northern section of the Budapest-Belgrade railway line, V-Híd Építő Zrt. And China Railway Magyarország Kft. Jointly submitted the winning bid. The final total value of the acquisition (excluding VAT) is USD 173,630,379 million, which is approximately HUF 52 billion at the exchange rate of HUF 300.