The system we are using may be out by 10% but there’s a fair chance if our system says over 60kmph then they are probably exceeding the 40 kmph limit!!

System is being upgraded to use high speed camera.

This copy also has the detail on the vibration reporting

We had our regular meeting yesterday at 730am with Metro Tunnel.

A lot of news, some good, some bad.

Let’s start with the good news

The TBM’s are nearly at South Yarra, Millie should breakthrough in the next few days. Alice is a couple of weeks behind. They will then be trucked back to the acoustic shed ready for their trip to the city in early 2021.

The significance of this is twofold, when only one TBM runs we seem to get less vibration. When no TBMs run, we get no trucks…..so HOPEFULLY the vibration will reduce next week and the trucks by end of October. So all the planets will line up at the wrong time….when you are finally able to get out of your apartment, it will be OK to be here. All will start again early in 2021 for around 5 months.

By the end of 2021, Edmund Herring Oval plant will be shutdown and the equipment removed. They will continue to use it but that noisy plant will be gone.

The not so good news…

They have done a stack of work on vibration, unfortunately with little success. You can see the super techie stuff in the report (I will post without the techie stuff for now…still waiting on a copy). I’m not happy with results but I can see that they are trying.

Trucks are a much bigger issue – we have installed a speed check system but CYP have questioned whether you can accurately determine the truck speed from video footage. I did note that the system is not super accurate, I am fairly confident that trucks tracked at over 60 kmph were probably exceeding the 40 kmph limit. The check on Saturday night of 45 trucks showed the average speed being 50 kmph with 80% of them exceeding 44 kmph (I allowed for 10% error).

Trucks are also still travelling on the wrong routes and consistently have uncovered loads.

CYP tell me that they are working very hard to get the drivers to behave, I’m not sure the drivers are listening.

We were also informed that it is not possible to fix the two damaged road areas out the front that cause the ‘truck bounce’.

Finally some ‘so so’ news..

Albert Rd Reserve is getting a special makeover….see pictures in the attachment

You may have received a notice from CYP about the impending closure of St Kilda Rd for a day next week for roadworks.

It is to fix this area in front of The Domain where the road surface is failing.

I hoped that the two problem areas in front of The Botanica that cause all the noise from the empty trucks could be fixed at the same time….I was told that it is technically not possible.

Closure details are here

Stumbled on this…love it

The material that the Millie is ‘eating’ through has to be sent to a tip site over the West Gate. That means we will have empty trucks going past all night this week.

Alice is expected to be on the same diet in another week or so.

Ear plug time again.

Reps from a group of nearby buildings, recently wrote to the City of Port Phillip about parking issues in the area.

Here is their reply

Latest info below

I have finished reading and happy to loan

You may have noticed an electronic sign in front of 412 St Kilda Rd advertising that St Kilda Rd will be closed 9am-4pm on Thursday this week.

I understand that it is for tree pruning to ease the journey for the TBM from South Yarra back to our acoustic box that will happen later this year.

Hopefully resident access will be maintained.

I’m guessing that they will not prune our magnificent trees, fingers crossed.

—–

Late update from CYP

There will be trees trimmed along St Kilda Road along the TBM transport route for the entire day tomorrow as the crews progressively move their way up St Kilda Road.

There wasn’t originally going to be a full northbound closure – however it appears we will in fact close a section between Park Street and Dorcas Street, however not from 9am-4pm.

There are roughly 3 trees to be trimmed in this section and the detour will be via Park-Wells-Dorcas. It’s likely that it will be closed from 9am for roughly 2 hours.

Local traffic/deliveries can still get into the closed section.

Once this section is finished St Kilda Road will be back open – however sections of the outer carriage way will progressively be closed between Dorcas and Linlithgow as the crews work their way up St Kilda Road.

The inner carriageway will remain open the entire time and we’ll maintain local building access and side street access via TC’s

Apologies – The VMS certainly makes it seem much more extreme than it actually is – I’ll get some advice out tomorrow (with a map of the Park to Dorcas section) to the mailing list in the event that others are confused about it.

I’ll see if I can get that VMS changed too

As a side note – You might be wondering why we’re trimming tree’s on that side of the road for TBM transportation.
The answer is that we’ve got 6 over height deliveries that are too tall to come down Toorak Road under tram lines and will instead need to come down the opposite side of St Kilda Road to get back into site.

(This way we only need to raise 3 sets of tram lines at Toorak Road, St Kilda Road/Linlithgow and St Kilda Road/Park Street

Below is a map that shows the route – though the red line on SKR needs to be updated to move to the other side of the road.