Del Mar is a small beach town on the southern California coast. It’s San Diego County’s smallest city with less than 4,000 people, but it’s affluent: The median household income of Del Mar is approximately $185,000, and the average home value is a whopping $3.6 million. And like many other wealthy neighborhoods , Del Mar’s residents care a bit too much about their property values.
Recently, officials from the San Diego Association of Governments announced there were developments in a two-decade-long project to take trains off the bluffs and onto a new route beneath residents’ homes, the San Diego Union Tribune reported .
There is only one rail connection between San Diego, the rest of the state, and the entire country, and “the economy depends on this connection for both passenger and freight transport, but landslides, rapid erosion, and seismic activity have caused collapses along the Del Mar Bluffs,” the San Diego Association of Governments’ website reads .
But, according to the San Diego Union Tribune, many residents are against the change. They’ve brought up all kinds of potential dangers and annoyances that could occur from the tunnels beneath their homes, from noise to toxic chemicals to vibrations to sinkholes—and of course, a hit to their property values.