[VIC] Suburban Rail Loop (SRL) underneath My Property: (

mrvaluepack on 11/03/2022 - 17:02
Last edited 11/03/2022 - 17:16

I bought a house late last year and when I got the keys, I received a letter in the mail about this. After some investigation I found out that my house is gonna be directly above the SRL East train lines :(

Questions:
1. Has anyone here lived in places above underground train lines?
2. What was it like? Could you hear and/or feel the vibrations?
3. Do you think the property value of those above the train lines would be affected because of this?
4. Should I cut my losses and just relocate again because of this new info?

Any opinions appreciated. Thanks.

Home & Garden

Comments

  • Hybroid on 11/03/2022 - 17:06
    +3
    • No but involved in projects
    • You shouldn't during normal operation, it's very much accounted for within design & monitored continuously for both noise and vibration. You might during tunnelling construction works but will be provided plenty heads up and incentives if it's above a certain threshold (movie or dinner tickets on specific days that will affect you so you can go out instead, as well as other compensation etc.)
    • Nope
    • No
    • mrvaluepack on 11/03/2022 - 17:15

      I really hope those studies & designs are accurate. Reading some london tube news articles about residents complaining about vibration and noise kinda scares me.

      • sjj89 on 11/03/2022 - 19:15
        +3

        If those studies & designs aren’t accurate, you get to be involved in a pretty cut and dry class action lawsuit

        • mrvaluepack on 11/03/2022 - 19:18

          I am a very light sleeper and vibrations/sounds deemed "normal" by the EPA bothers me.

      • lgacb08 on 11/03/2022 - 22:30

        at least you can have leverage to plead your case to get all the windows double glazed.

        • serpserpserp on 12/03/2022 - 07:36
          +1

          Why? The loop is metres underground, not running down the side of their house.

  • brendanm on 11/03/2022 - 17:32
    +4
    1. Do you think the property value of those above the train lines would be affected because of this?

    Are you worried about it? Most other people will be as well.

    • mrvaluepack on 11/03/2022 - 17:58

      Yes and the noise/vibration.

      • geoffs87 on 11/03/2022 - 22:42
        +3

        honestly, 90% of future buyers are unlikely to have any clue where any of the underground infrastructure is, and even less likely to look it up. Unless it sounds like a plane is low flying over your house during the inspections - i doubt theres an issue.

        Really the only issue here is your tolerance, and i imagine they have a responsibility to ensure any noise/vibration is very minimal.

        You may feel some vibration during construction. I remember waking a few nights in a row to reallllly quiet humming a couple years ago. Stopped after a week or so, turned out it was tunnelling for the Northern metro line in Sydney, when i googled it, was about 50m from my house!

  • capslock on 11/03/2022 - 17:36
    +8

    Don't worry about it. Property only ever goes up so you'll be fine.

    There will be another FOMO price spike in the next few years. Sell at that time and nobody will care what's underneath your house.

  • Ghost47 on 11/03/2022 - 18:15

    Vic is good at infrastructure, you have nothing to worry about.

    • Iwantthebestprice on 11/03/2022 - 19:14
      +5

      Yes, west gate tunnel is going perfectly fine…

      • kanmen on 11/03/2022 - 19:16
        -3

        Wow, you managed to find the one out of the many large scale projects that have been completed or are in construction, well done!

        • Iwantthebestprice on 11/03/2022 - 19:19
          +5

          Monash fwy has been very messy! Rather then do it all at once for over 5 years we have dealt with 80 km/h speed limits and constant lane closures and 40 km/h.

          • kanmen on 11/03/2022 - 19:38
            +2

            @Iwantthebestprice: I don't know what you want, you want the work to be completed in a timely manner, presuming you expect it to happen overnight, but then you also want it to happen to budget with no issues. Sometimes I wonder why governments even bother upgrading roads when there's always someone always unhappy about it.

            A quick google search would have told you what's going on in the Monash. I don't know how you think doing a 20km stretch of freeway is possible 'all at once.'

            Stop reading the Herald Sun, start looking things up yourself.

            • Iwantthebestprice on 11/03/2022 - 19:49
              +5

              @kanmen: I agree Monash is a big task, but wow its not massive it’s literally adding and extra line each side of a freeway it should not take almost 5 years!! The Monash is quick becoming a running joke of the east. No these things don’t happen overnight but adding 2 lanes to a Fwy should not take 5 years

              • serpserpserp on 12/03/2022 - 07:39

                @Iwantthebestprice: Took forever on the Western Ring Road. These kinda roads will forever be upgraded. Then the busier they get, the more crashes they have.

          • lgacb08 on 11/03/2022 - 22:32

            @Iwantthebestprice: Same as M80, in the last 10 years or so I can't think of a moment when you can cruise 100km/h end to end.

            • Iwantthebestprice on 11/03/2022 - 23:26

              @lgacb08: Don’t worry in my 30 years of living I can’t recall a time I’ve ever done 100 kmh on the west agate either way

          • Ghost47 on 11/03/2022 - 23:02
            +1

            @Iwantthebestprice: Try living in Sydney where road works at an intersection literally takes months and where potholes appear after it rains.

            Vic has it damn good.

            • serpserpserp on 12/03/2022 - 07:41
              +1

              @Ghost47: Vic freeway roads are a dream compared to Sydney's. Some of the newer ones in Sydney are better than they use to be. But overall a much less stressful drive in Melbourne.

              • Ghost47 on 12/03/2022 - 14:04

                @serpserpserp: Victorian roads in general are way nicer than Sydney. It’s like Sydney roads are made in China or something, it completely astounds me that pot holes appear after rain — that is not normal at all.

                I get Sydney is not flat but it’s not an excuse for why the roads are so bad, e.g. Parramatta road is paved like crap and there are so many roads that are similar to it. I swear the gov is stealing tax payer’s money.

                Like I LOVE driving, but in Sydney I absolutely hate it.

                Sorry have to vent about this.

                • theguru1 on 13/03/2022 - 05:54

                  @Ghost47: Double the rainfall compared to Melbourne might have something to do with it.

        • Iwantthebestprice on 11/03/2022 - 19:20
          +1

          East west link, dropped and cost almost a billion $$, just to be re done because of an election.. great track record

          • serpserpserp on 12/03/2022 - 07:42
            +1

            @Iwantthebestprice: Yeah the Libs are terrible.

            • Forkinhell on 12/03/2022 - 14:21

              @serpserpserp: That's nothing compared to the Labor mob here in Qld.

              They spent (wasted) $1.1B on a payroll system for the nurses and that was to IBM, who their top IT guy used to work for.

              Whyever didn't they just get Quickbooks?

              Now they have just paid $100M + half of construction costs for a ONE-YEAR lease at a refugee/COVID19 shelter near Toowoomba

              Mob of wasters!

  • [Deactivated] on 11/03/2022 - 18:34
    +1
    1. Do you think the property value of those above the train lines would be affected because of this?

    most likely, but in this day and age the price would still exceed what is reasonable, even with the affected market value.

    if you ask people who don't want the houses / don't own them, they might say "oh nah it won't affect it" but most of them probably wouldn't pay as much for a house over the line as they would for one that wasn't over it.

  • holdenmg on 11/03/2022 - 18:43
    -1

    stupid -voter

  • kanmen on 11/03/2022 - 19:14

    Have you ever felt or heard the trains underground in the CBD?

    • mrvaluepack on 11/03/2022 - 19:17

      Dont live or spend enough time near them but I do hear them near the suburban underground train stations.

      • freefall101 on 11/03/2022 - 20:26

        There are suburban underground train stations in Melbourne? I didn't think any of it was underground except the loop.

        • mrvaluepack on 11/03/2022 - 20:50

          Heaps

          https://levelcrossings.vic.gov.au/

          • kanmen on 11/03/2022 - 22:01
            +6

            @mrvaluepack: I'm not sure they're similar to what you're talking about though. Those are submerged rail stations, usually near roads. They're not at the depth the Suburban Rail Loop will be at, so I don't think those are relevant at all. Most of the time they're open so obviously there's going to be noise…..

          • serpserpserp on 12/03/2022 - 07:43

            @mrvaluepack: Can you link us to some actually underground and not in a ditch?

            • jjjaar on 12/03/2022 - 13:37

              @serpserpserp: Box hill is about the only one that’s more underground than in a ditch, but compared to the city loop it’s more in a ditch than underground.

  • Euphemistic on 11/03/2022 - 19:24
    +6

    Make sure you put an induction loop under your carpet. It’ll charge your phone every time a train goes beneath.

  • Mechz on 11/03/2022 - 19:56

    Well if you didn't do any research about these things before buying I'm sure there will be another sucker ready to take it off your hands without doing their research either.

  • freefall101 on 11/03/2022 - 20:26
    +1

    If it means your house is going to be somewhere near a train station it'll go up, not down.

    • [Deactivated] on 11/03/2022 - 20:34
      +1

      Well yeah, a train in a tunnel has to go up to reach a station on the surface.

    • mrvaluepack on 11/03/2022 - 20:48

      Lol its not, but itll be directly above one of the lines.

  • [Deactivated] on 11/03/2022 - 20:35
    +2

    I've read that once a tunnel is below a certain depth, (which wasn't very deep from memory), you can't feel the boring and you certainly can't feel operations. I wouldn't worry about it OP.

  • altomic on 11/03/2022 - 22:56
    +1

    yeah, In london I lived above the Jubilee line. never felt a thing.

  • BobLim on 12/03/2022 - 02:01

    Do you think the property value of those above the train lines would be affected because of this?

    For the billions of dollars TBM tunnelling costs, it'd better be like nothing ever happened.

    What an incredible waste of money to tunnel under low-density suburban houses.

  • ozzie freddo on 12/03/2022 - 08:50
    +1

    Your compass may be affected when a train passes. There is quite a large magnetic field from the traction current flowing in the rails and overhead wires. The Melbourne system uses DC so a compass will react to it.

    • pangwen on 12/03/2022 - 13:01
      +1

      Ah yes for when I’m doing some at-home orienteering :D

  • OzHunterNSW on 12/03/2022 - 14:26

    next you will be complaining about bells on trams

  • cashless on 12/03/2022 - 19:05
    +2

    I work in this area & I know how detailed the acoustic studies are at the design stage. With a tunnel, any potential problem for your house is either vibration or secondary noise (walls, windows, ceilings, floors can sometimes act as noise emitters, similar to a speaker cone).
    In your case, there would have been very detailed modelling, studies of local ground/soil condition, checks on the house structure, accurate predictions about the wheels & rails (the source of vibration) and countless hours of further checking.
    Predictions would be made about the type & frequency of vibration that would reach your house and decisions would have been made about the best mitigation method (how to reduce & control it).
    The technology involved is advanced, accurate & reliable. It has been done many times before in many places.
    If there was the slightest chance that you did notice trains passing, you can report it & the authorities will take it seriously and come to study it, possibly in your house. That situation is extremely unlikely, but if it happened, there are several ways to further improve the situation by treating the track.
    You will feel vibration during construction while they bore out the tunnel. It might last for 2, perhaps 3 days, but it’s temporary.

    The reason why many people in London complain is because they live above old tunnels designed before acoustic technology was advanced enough & before environmental legislation was introduced. In those old tunnels, it is hard to mitigate the vibration, but even then, there are ways to do it.

    TLDR. Don’t worry, you’re in good hands.

    • mrvaluepack on 12/03/2022 - 20:14

      I want to believe that but as an engineer I know that all design and builds have A LOT of assumptions especially when it hasn't been done in Melbourne before and there is no way they can accurately predict all those stuff you mentioned. Heck, they can't even get cinemas sound proof properly, I can usually hear vibrations/movies from the next cinema if I seat near the aisle. I don't really wanna be the guinea pig home for this project :(

  • rektrading on 13/03/2022 - 06:03
    1. Should I cut my losses and just relocate again because of this new info?

    Move and let someone else enjoy the rumble.

  • NotBot on 13/03/2022 - 13:31
    +1

    Unsure of effect on property price.

    About your concerns regarding vibrations, the design assumptions are checked during construction and any major geological variations (the main assumption made during tunnel design) are addressed to keep the tunnel within the design tolerance. The largest vibrations will occur during construction so if you don't feel anything then you won't have to worry later on. Not sure how familiar you are with underground rail but the trains are nothing like the old diesel trains you can feel and hear coming for miles.

    If you are really concerned about it a potential way to roughly gauge it may be to enquire how deep the tunnel is below your property and then find a location on the Sydney metro at a similar depth and take a trip and stand above it to compare what it may be like.

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