FURIOUS residents have hit out at a railway network after complaining an under-construction station is keeping them awake at night.
Locals in Taff’s Well, South Wales, are complaining that they are suffering from sleepless nights because of loud workers and screeching building works.
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Workers at the under-construction Metro station have reportedly been keeping them awake the entire evening with their swearing and banging.
Neil Ellis, 46, claims his work has been affected by the noise levels which sometimes go on until 5am in the morning.
The Cardiff University researcher told WalesLive: “We live next to a railway, we’re not unused to noise and I don’t even hear the trains any more, but this has been completely different
“The noise starts at about 10pm at night and they sometimes go through to 4am or 5am.
“You hear them dropping stuff onto the railway, they are using these big metal pipes, which they are carrying and dropping down on the railway – it’s really noisy.
“I have to concentrate for the job I’m doing and sometimes I can’t concentrate, it makes me feel tired.
“I know they’re not choir boys, but you can hear them swearing and shouting.
“They’re doing drilling and cutting – they might need to do drilling there – but surely they could cut stuff beforehand. But it’s not just the noise, we were given an end date and we can see that’s probably not going to be met.”
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The Transport for Wales project was set to be complete in 2023 after plans were put in place to create a new integrated transport network.
There has been more than £800m poured into the project for the new trains, which will include improved features.
A £100m metro depot is being created at Taff’s Well, and will also include the electrification of the line – leading to an increase in construction.
Dozens of residents have hit out at the ongoing work at the station, and are calling for more consideration to be taken while the new structure is erected.
Bill Loader, 74, has lived on the street for his entire life and found himself sleeping in the day because of the disruption to his night time routine.
He said: “I had a friend here a few weeks ago and he was sitting in the conservatory and he jumped out of his skin because of a noise – I asked him what the noise was and it was just a train going past.
“I didn’t notice it because we are so used to trains. However, this noise is really, really loud. It keeps me up and I fall asleep in the afternoons now.
“I sleep at the front, it’s not so bad when I’m downstairs, but when I go to bed, I like to have the window open and I can’t leave it open anymore.
“You get the generator going, the horn beeping every couple of minutes and you can hear them talking.”
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Julie Rabaiotti added: “It gets you down after a while. We’ve been through a lot with the pandemic and I think we’re all mentally fragile and then we have all this going on.
“It’s as though there’s someone in your back garden about to come into your house.
“You’re hearing loads of bangs and you’re jumping out of bed thinking something’s going wrong because it sounds like a disaster.
“It’s quite scary really. There are also bright lights – I sleep in the back and the lights shine in. Again that interferes with your sleep.”
‘SOUNDS LIKE A DISASTER’
Residents 15 miles away in Mountain Ash have also been complaining about the amount of noise used at another Metro site.
Air Traffic controller Martin Hardcastle claims that he has been unable to work because of the lack of sleep.
Martin, 49, said: “My work is safety critical. I have to go into work completely fresh.
“There have been a number of shifts where I’ve had to phone my manager and say I haven’t had any sleep and he’s said I can’t go in.
“We sit inside hoping there’s no noise, then when 8.30pm comes and we start to hear the warbling sounds from the machines, we know we’re in for a bad night.
“That can go on generally until about 3.30am. It’s not all night but it’s sporadic – you never know when it’s going to be. They sometimes do it in the night and then in the morning. There seems to be a day shift and a night shift.”
A Transport for Wales spokesman said: “The work we’re carrying out to develop the South Wales Metro is the biggest rail infrastructure upgrade in decades, so that we can run faster, more frequent and greener services between Cardiff and the valleys, and we’re aware this will have an impact on our railway neighbours.
I know they’re not choir boys, but you can hear them swearing and shouting.
Neil Ellis
“Our key priority is to ensure that the transformation of the railway is delivered safely. The safest way to do this is to undertake the work while the railway is closed, so that no trains are running through areas where work is being completed.
“We want to keep disruption to a minimum, while also ensuring that work continues at the right pace to deliver improved services across the Metro network as soon as possible.
“The way we’ve chosen to do this is to mostly keep work to the night time and weekends, as there are fewer people travelling.
“Our timetable for delivering the work has to be flexible and responsive to different circumstances and will often change at short notice.
“While ideally we would want to ensure that lineside neighbours are informed of disruptive work that’s happening locally, we also don’t want to be informing neighbours of work that doesn’t go ahead or changes in its scope at the last minute.
“Being responsible neighbours is important to us, and we take any noise-related complaints seriously, especially those related to foul language.
“We advise anyone affected by this to contact our Customer Relations team so that the matter can be investigate.”
