THE transportation undersecretary of the Philippines, Mr Cesar Chavez, announced on July 3 that construction will start in the second quarter of 2018 on the first phase of a project to build a 2000km railway on the island of Mindanao.

GRAND Paris Express has awarded the final two civil works contracts for the construction of the €3.7bn 33km Line 15 South linking Pont-de-Sèvres and Noisy Champs in the southern suburbs of Paris.

RB Rail, the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian joint venture responsible for implementing the Rail Baltica standard-gauge high-speed project, has awarded a €563,065 contract to Systra to develop design guidelines for the project.

NEARLY 400 people representing 165 companies from around the world attended a briefing on July 5 on the planned Kuala Lumpur – Singapore high-speed rail project covering tender parameters, procurement processes and harmonisation of regulatory requirements for the upcoming Assets Company (AssetsCo) tender.

MALAYSIA’s MyHSR Corporation and Singapore’s Land Transport Authority (LTA) will jointly hold an industry briefing in Singapore on July 5 for the Assets Company (AssetsCo) tender for the Kuala Lumpur - Singapore high-speed rail project.

IRJ at UITP Global Summit 2017: CDPQ Infra's ambitious plans to develop Metropolitan Electric Network (REM), a new 67km double-track automated light metro in Montreal, remain on schedule in spite of some alterations to the project which have increased overall costs to $C 6.04bn ($US 4.4bn).

RB Rail, the company set up to oversee the Rail Baltica high-speed rail project to link the three Baltic states to Poland, has appointed its management team and published the results of a cost-benefit analysis.

AN agreement has been reached between the Israeli government and CityPass, the concessionaire of the Jerusalem light rail network, to extend the Red Line at each end and build a section of the Green Line.

TANZANIA’s president Mr John Magufuli officially launched construction on April 12 of the first phase of the country’s 2561km standard-gauge railway project which will eventually link the Indian Ocean port of Dar es Salaam with Mwanza on Lake Victoria and Kigoma on Lake Tanganyika, as well as neighbouring Rwanda and Burundi.

THE CEO of Italian State Railways (FS), Mr Renato Mazzoncini, signed an agreement in Rome on April 7 with Mr Guillermo Dietrich, Argentina’s minister of transport, for FS to provide technical assistance for the Buenos Aires Regional Express (RER) rail project.