German efficiency wins once again

Love it or loathe it, Berlin's new train station is undeniably impressive for its architectural scale. Picture / Reuters

BERLIN - With a confident smile on his face and a spring in his step, German rail chief Hartmut Mehdorn walks through the buzzing Berlin building site where Europe's largest railway station is going up.

After more than 10 years of work, the round-the-clock project is on budget and on time to open at the end of May, two weeks before the start of the soccer World Cup that will bring more than a million extra visitors to Germany.

"The light at the end of the tunnel is definitely getting brighter," said the chief executive of rail operator Deutsche Bahn. "A load will drop off our minds when that station is finally finished."

Loved by some, loathed by others, the former Lehrter Bahnhof station is nearing the end of its estimated 700 million ($1.19 billion) transformation from a World War II ruin to one of Europe's key rail hubs.

The huge station, near the chancellery building and within sight of the Reichstag Parliament's glass cupola, has become a sightseeing stop for visitors and Berliners.

But its fame is tinged with notoriety partly because of public complaints about the location and partly because of a dispute between Deutsche Bahn and the architect, who says the rail operator mutilated his design by changing the ceiling.

The station's strategic importance is not in doubt: with the World Cup looming, it will play a crucial role in getting teams, equipment and media from game to game across the country.

It is believed to be Berlin's most expensive building site by yearly investment and the biggest European rail intersection for east-west and north-south trains.

"Berlin can really be proud of this station," said Mehdorn. "This will be the envy of many cities."

Deutsche Bahn expects some 300,000 people to use the station every day with 1500 local, national and international trains scheduled to depart daily.

The building was designed by Meinhard von Gerkan, one of Germany's most famous architects who, with his partners, also designed the roof on Berlin's Olympic Stadium.

The relationship between Gerkan and Deutsche Bahn started to sour after the rail operator decided some years ago to cut the outside roof spanning the east-west tracks by a quarter to 320 metres to reduce building time.

Gerkan said this reduced the station to a "torso".

But the builder's decision to change the ceiling in the 450-metre-long and 60-metre-wide underground hall, where north-south trains will stop, really angered him. Gerkan accused Deutsche Bahn of harming his architectural copyright by changing the ceiling, which had been designed to arch and undulate cathedral-like over platforms and tracks.

"This is probably the biggest underground hall worldwide and it looks like a supermarket," said Gerkan, after Deutsche Bahn installed a flat, grey metal ceiling.

"This is just pure disfigurement. I cannot believe that a builder would mutilate his own project."

A court now has to decide if the ceiling should be changed back to the original design. It is not known when that ruling might be delivered.

Others have more pragmatic objections to the project. The site in the former no man's land at the intersection between East and West Berlin is rich in history - but some argue it is anything but handy for Berliners.

It was at Lehrter Bahnhof station that Germany's first chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, bade farewell to politics in 1890. Nearby is the place where Guenter Litfin was shot dead in August 1961 by East German guards as he tried to swim to the West - just 11 days after the Berlin Wall was erected.

Unlike other main central stations, there are no houses huddled around the tracks and some of the newly built tarmac streets around the station are virtually empty. Berlin's daily newspapers dubbed the station "the centre of nowhere" and "the big emptiness", questioning how useful it would be for the city's residents who might struggle to get there because of poor links to the local transport network.

Mehdorn rejects these arguments.

"A station like this is only possible because there wasn't anything else, because it was a sand desert," he said.

"We are not building this station for the soccer World Cup, we are building it for the next 50 years."

Gerkan agrees that the station is more than a traffic hub.

"This station is the business card of Germany."

At the station

* The $1.19 billion Berlin railway station will be Europe's largest.
* After 10 years of work, the project is on budget and on time to open at the end of May.
* Some 300,000 people are expected to use the station every day.
* And 1500 local, national and international trains will depart daily.

- REUTERS