Standing on Garth Street in Taff's Well on a sunny Thursday afternoon, you can hear the calming sound of birds singing and the friendly chatter of neighbours. Located adjacent to the valley railway line and just a five-minute walk from the village station, you might hear the rumble of a passing train every so often, but it doesn't take away from the peaceful atmosphere.
And besides, many people living along the terraced street have done so for decades - they say they no longer notice it. But come 8pm most evenings and they will tell you a very different story.
That's because they are living metres away from the biggest rail infrastructure upgrade in decades: the South Wales Metro. Warbling, screeching, banging, crashing and swearing are just some of the noises described by residents who are kept awake until as late as 3.30am some nights.
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"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," said Neil Ellis who lives just a few doors down from the railway on Garth Street. The 46-year-old researches psychology at Cardiff University and has published work on the impact noise has on those working at sea. He said it was ironic how his daily life is now similarly impacted by noise.
"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," he said. I have to concentrate for the job I'm doing and sometimes I can't concentrate, it makes me feel tired. It's ironic that I spend all day writing about seafarers dealing with noise at sea and I'm having to deal with it at home because of this development."
The Transport For Wales (TFW) project - originally set to be complete in 2023 - will be an integrated public transport network. It will comprise heavy and light rail, trams and new buses, along with several new train stations – designed to make it easier for people to travel, with more capacity and faster, more frequent and greener services. TfW has invested £800m into the new trains, which will include improved features such as air conditioning and automated level-boarding.
The current work affecting those in Taff's Well includes the erection of a £100 million metro depot as well as the electrification of the line. The new depot on the Garth Works Industrial Estate will become the base for approximately 400 train crew, 35 train maintenance staff and 52 control centre staff. You can get more stories like this by subscribing to our newsletters.
And despite the nuisance caused by the ongoing work, every resident we spoke to said they are in favour - or at least not against - the metro itself. They just wish more consideration could be given to the impact on them while the work is being carried out.
"None of us are against the Metro itself, we think it's going to be brilliant in the long-run, but it's the way they've dealt with it," Neil said. "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."
Bill Loader is about to turn 75 years old and said he has lived in his house on Garth Street his entire life. He said the disruption to his sleep at night means he often now finds himself nodding off during the day.
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."
But for Julie Rabaiotti, the noise isn't only a major inconvenience, it's also scary. The Garth Street resident said at times, it makes her fear somebody is breaking into her house.
"It gets you down after a while," she said. "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."
With the various disturbances going on, neighbour Tracy Lamb said she worries about what will happen to the house prices of the streets near the development. She said she has lived in her house for 36 years and couldn't have foreseen these works happening when she first bought the property.
She said: "My worry is when you look out there now, it doesn't look a pretty sight, especially with all these pylons now going up. We understand the work has got to be done - which is absolutely great - but would it devalue our properties? Because we are literally on the end of the street. Further on into the village the house prices may boom because of this, but what about ours?"
Like the others, she said the sound impacts her life. Though she doesn't know exactly how they could improve it, she believes there must be a way that the work can continue while having a lesser effect on those living nearby.
"I'm a lab technician so I deal with intricate measures and things like that, so it can be a bit hard after putting up with the noise until 4am. It can be very tiring. I don't know exactly what they could do - whether they could put sound barriers up or something?"
Councillor for the area, Jill Bonetto, said it was a "very difficult time" for all parties involved. Though she agrees that the work needs to be done and will benefit her area in the long-run, she said she is concerned about her residents' well-being. She noted that most of the work has to be done at night to protect the safety of the workers.
She said: "While I'm not happy regarding the noise, this is work that has to be done and some of it can't be done in the day because of the trains running. However, I really do appreciate where the residents are coming from.
"I have videos sent from Garth Street and [nearby] Kings Street and I can assure you that Rhondda Cynon Taf council is involved and working with TfW trying to get a better solution to the noise. I'm constantly keeping in contact with PHW and if I get any complaint, I forward it on to the officer dealing with this who make TfW aware. They are working hard together.
"You have to think about the health and safety of the workmen and the well-being of the residents. It's a really difficult one."
But it's not just residents living in Taff's Well being affected by the major metro development. About 15 miles away in Mountain Ash, the plethora of concerns are echoed.
Partners Martin Hardcastle and Nicola Morris live on Miskin Road, just a few yards across the road from an industrial site used by those working on the metro. The couple, who are 49 and 42 respectively, said the noise pollution in particular is having a colossal impact on their lives.
Martin works as an air traffic controller and said he has been unable to work some days because he is too sleep deprived. He said he wishes more could be done to inform residents of when they can expect the noise to be at its worst. He said all they had to go off was a letter stating the works would go on until 2023, which could cause noise at night.
He 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. If they'd tell me when it's going to happen, I could maybe go and stay at a friend's place."
Martin said he and Nicola moved to the house two years ago for some peace and quiet. However, their lives now couldn't be further from what they envisaged. He described the noise as an unpleasant warbling sound or alarm which can go off into the early hours of the morning.
"We've been here around two years and had lovely peace and quiet for the first year or so," he said. "They started building a bridge down the road, so there was a bit of traffic going in and out of that site but it didn't really bother us. It was 9am to 5pm and you knew to expect
"Since the work started, it has not been 9am to 5pm. Machinery has been turning up all hours of the night. They generally start at about 8.30pm. 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.
"My garden is where I sit and relax because I have quite a stressful job. When I'm not in work, sometimes I just want to sit outside and enjoy my garden, I don't want to hear the machinery and the banging. I try not to think about this going on for another year or so, it's so depressing and makes me feel anxious."
Nicola said the couple had become so frustrated that they'd even walked down to the site at around 2.30am in their slippers to beg the workers to quieten down.
"We understand it from their point of view, but we never know when they are going to be there," she said. "We just want some peace and quiet."
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.
“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.”
Regarding the issue on workers' swearing being heard inside homes, the spokesman said: “ 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.”
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