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Team lays blame for Wenzhou train crash

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Poor management has been blamed for the deadly bullet train crash in Wenzhou in east China's Zhejiang Province - overturning a preliminary investigation that held a defective signaling system to be responsible.

A deadly high-speed train crash occured in July, killing at least 40 passengers. [File photo]

"The local railway authority didn't use the equipment correctly, leading to a malfunction. After the equipment broke down, staff operated it improperly, causing one train to rear-end a stalled one, leaving 40 dead and around 200 injured," said Wang Mengshu, deputy director of the team who investigated the July accident, according to yesterday's Beijing Times.

The signaling system was in working order and had been used on many other high-speed railway routes without any problems, Wang said.

Wang told the newspaper that the local railway authority had failed to maintain the system properly, causing it to fail after multiple lightning strikes in the lead up to the crash.

"The weather was a minor contributor and the main issue is their poor management," Wang said.

The completed investigation report was submitted to the State Council for approval in September, the newspaper quoted Wang as saying.

Struck by lightning

The preliminary investigation blamed a design defect in the signaling system for the crash.

After being struck by lightning, the malfunction caused the signal equipment to mistakenly show a green when the light should have been red, Xinhua news agency quoted An Lusheng, director of the Shanghai Railway Bureau, as saying soon after the crash.

Meanwhile, the bidding process for future railway projects is to be conducted using a third party platform in response to concerns over transparency.

Previously, bid management and supervision was conducted by railway departments and local railway bureaus.

Projects were usually awarded to companies which had good connections with the railway authorities, it was claimed. The former railway minister, Liu Zhijun, was sacked during a graft probe that involved a series of railway projects during his tenure.

According to the Beijing News, cellphone signals will be blocked during the bidding process to ensure fairness. Bidders will have to register and have their fingerprints checked at the Beijing construction project contract trade center where the bidding will take place.

In a scandal exposed earlier this month, cooks with little knowledge of construction were found helping build a railway in Jilin Province.

Railway construction is big business with up to 800 billion yuan (US$125.7 billion) spent annually on railway projects in recent years.