International rail engineering companies are expected to bid next week for consultancy services on the planned Beijing-Tianjin high-speed railway project, a source from the Ministry of Railways said yesterday.

No details were disclosed on the number or identities of the bidders.

The cost of the planned 140-kilometer rail link between the nation's capital and neighboring Tianjin Municipality is estimated at 14.3 billion yuan (US$1.7 billion). When complete, it is expected to cut travel time between the two cities from about one hour 20 minutes to half an hour.

February 27 is the deadline for international companies to submit bids, said an anonymous source from a German engineering company involved in the competition.

"The tenderer will assess the bids starting next week and finalize the winner of the project a few weeks later," he said.

Construction is scheduled to start by June and trains to begin operating in 2007, Tianjin Mayor Dai Xianglong was quoted by Xinhua News Agency as saying.

The rail project is considered a step toward regional economic integration. The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region will become the third national economic hub, following the Yangtze River and Pearl River deltas.

As part of its plan to alleviate the nation's rail transportation bottleneck, China has approved the building of 3,000 kilometers of high-speed railways, including lines from central China's Wuhan to south China's Guangzhou, and from central Zhengzhou to Xi'an in the northwest.

All the high-speed lines will have designed speed of more than 200 kilometers per hour, according to the railway ministry's plan.

(China Daily February 24, 2005)