A Chinese consortium led by China Railway Corporation (CRC), which has announced its intention to build the upcoming Kuala Lumpur-Singapore High Speed Rail (HSR), started its bidding efforts by holding an experience exhibition on Monday in Kuala Lumpur.
The exhibition, held at KL Sentral station, a busy transportation hub in the capital city, will last three months.
The Chinese exhibition includes a driver's cabin, where people can simulate driving the locomotive, some high-speed train models as well as some passenger seats, where people can use augmented reality and virtual reality technologies to immerse themselves in the trip on high-rail trains.
Syed Hamid, chairman of the Land Public Transport Commission, said the exhibition is a good chance for the Malaysian public to feel how we should enter into the culture or the era of high-speed rail.
He praised China for completing the building of a high-speed rail network traversing more than 20,000 kilometers.
Yang Zhongmin, chairman of China Railway International Group Co. Ltd, a subsidiary under the CRC, said the event is not only to show the benefits ushered in by high-speed rail, but also to show to the Malaysian government and public that his team is capable of providing "the most advanced, the most mature and the safest solution for the HSR project linking Singapore and Malaysia."
Yang noted that his team will start to make preparations for the bidding process soon, as the project is about to call for tenders early this year.
Others in the Chinese consortium include China Railway Group Limited, CRRC Corporation, China Communications Construction Company Limited and China Railway Construction Corporation Limited.
The governments of Malaysia and Singapore signed a legally-binding agreement last month on the HSR project, which will cut travel time between the two cities to 90 minutes once it run into operation by the end of 2026. Companies from China, Japan and Europe have long expressed interests in this project.
