EUROPE: Bombardier Transportation and Finmeccanica's rail subsidiary AnsaldoBreda announced on April 1 that they had signed an agreement to jointly develop, bid and manufacture a high speed train capable of travelling at more than 300 km/h which will eliminate 'shortcomings of existing concepts.' Bombardier said the train would offer 'improved operating efficiency and safety, enhanced seating capacity and compliance with European interoperability standards'.
Bombardier has been involved with a variety of high speed trains, including the ICE and TGV families, ETR500 and AVE S-102, and is building 200 km/h and 250 km/h trainsets for China, but has not yet won any orders for its 300 km/h Zefiro high speed concept train. AnsaldoBreda is part of the Trevi consortium that built the ETR500 sets in Italy, and is now working on the V250 Albatros trainsets for the Amsterdam Brussels route.
In November 2005 AnsaldoBreda signed 'a strategic and industrial partnership' with Alstom aimed at the development of single-deck high speed trains for the European market (RG 1.06 p47). However, this failed to gel, and Alstom Senior Vice-President Roland Kientz confirmed in March that the agreement had been terminated.
