STUTTGART (Germany) With work barely begun, public ire over one of Europe's biggest construction projects has exposed some hard truths about Germany, the continent's top economy.

Protestors have come out in force against a seven-billion-euro (nine-billion-dollar) grand plan to turn Stuttgart and the surrounding region into a 21st-century continental rail hub.

The nine-year project aims to make the southwestern city part of one of the continent's longest high-speed lines, the 1,500-kilometre “Magistrale for Europe” linking Paris, Strasbourg, Vienna and Bratislava.

Engineers plan to blast 16 tunnels and cuttings into the many surrounding hills, build 18 new bridges, lay 60 kilometres of new train track and create three new stations.

Stuttgart's terminus will be utterly transformed into an underground through-station, so that trains no longer have to chug in and back out but can whisk passengers on to other European cities.

The project will also give a boost to the 10-million-strong state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, home to industrial giants like Daimler, Porsche and Bosch as well as legions of family-owned engineering firms that supply factories the world over.

“Around 2.5 million people live in the Stuttgart region and they are stuck in traffic morning, noon and night,” Stuttgart 21's spokesman Wolfgang Drexler told AFP. “There have been no major construction projects here for 20 years.” But people in the middle-class and normally sleepy state capital are angry, saying the project is far too expensive and disruptive and will fail to speed up rail traffic.

Thousands have taken part in protests in recent weeks. On Friday about 30,000 demonstrators rallied in the city, protest organisers said.

“It's a load of nonsense,” one well-heeled 81-year-old woman who declined to give her name told AFP. “People won't stand for it.”

“We citizens feel cheated,” chimed in Frank Dvorschak, 54, a head teacher, a green protest badge on his lapel. “I come to the demos when I can, with my whole family. It is growing more and more.” In particular they object to the side wings of their beloved and protected train station building, an interwar modernist classic designed by Paul Bonatz, falling victim to the wrecking ball.

The clock tower and the main hall will remain, but robbed of is original use since the new platforms will all be underground, buried under a plaza punctuated by futuristic, eye-shaped skylights.

One of Germany's leading newspapers, the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, likened it to destroying St. Peters in the Vatican City but leaving the dome intact.

Opponents also say that doing so much underground construction is potentially dangerous, and that the current station need only be modernised.

Others say that many of the new lines will be unsuitable for cargo trains.

“It's been neglected a bit, but it's still the second most punctual terminus station in Germany,” says Axel Wieland from the BUND green pressure group, one of the many organisations against the project.

But supporters say that when the decision to go ahead was taken in 1995, a majority supported it. And a whole new district will be created where the rail lines now stand, freeing up land for parks and valuable real estate.

“People are being told a pack of lies,” Drexler insists.

Stuttgart might well come back to hurt Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Baden-Wuerttemberg has elections in March, and Stuttgart 21 could well be a decisive factor if her conservatives lose power in the state.

Whatever the arguments - and both sides have put forth convincing-sounding “experts” to back their stand - it is clear that for all its claims to be modern and green, Germany has a rail network in a dire state.

In France, a train ride from Paris to Lyon takes slightly less than two hours, while going from Hamburg to Cologne, a similar distance, takes twice as long - and around the same time as by car. So Germans tend to drive or fly.

ICE intercity trains in “polycentric” Germany make many more stops than French high-speed “Trains a Grande Vitesse” (TGV), Christian Boettger, transport expert at Berlin's University of Applied Sciences (HTW), told AFP.

Planning procedures are also slower and cities and states use their clout not to lose an ICE service. They also refuse to have their main train stations anywhere other than in the centre, experts say.

Another factor is the lobbying power of Germany's key auto industry, says Boettger. Environmentalists say this makes a mockery of Merkel's attempts to make Germany greener.

“Sixty per cent of Germans never use public transport, and you can't win an election if you turn against them,” Boettger said. “The government talks a lot about the environment but it does very little.”—AFP