By Oliver Smith
Baldwin Street, world's steepest street, in Dunedin, New Zealand.Credit: Alamy
Spare a thought for residents of the world's steepest street. Not only must they grind their way up a 35 per cent slope to get home each day, but they must dodge hordes of tourists while doing so - some of whom, due to a lack of public facilities, had taken to relieving themselves in their front gardens.
Until this week, that is. For Baldwin Street in Dunedin, recognised by Guinness World Records for its ludicrous gradients, has just had a loo installed.
The $90,000 commode is a response to the quirky attraction's growing popularity. The New Zealand city is increasingly appearing on cruise ship itineraries, and many of those that disembark make a beeline for the otherwise unassuming residential road.
No exit, no turning: The world's steepest street.Credit: Alamy
And when nature called, it was causing problems.
A local church minister, Steve O'Connor, told Radio New Zealand that he had been urging the council to install the loo for some time.
"We've had bus drivers just tell the people 'go and use the church toilets, they're quite happy for you to do it', without ever checking with us," he said.
"My administrator was going to lock up one day and heard voices in the chapel and there were 15 people in there waiting to use the loo."
Gavin Mockford, co-owner of The Grid, a local cafe, added that the constant flow of tourists stopping to use his lavatory had resulted in a broken loo seat and a cistern and sink torn from the wall.
Some were even more brazen. A local resident, Lynette, told Radio New Zealand: "I caught a man, a few years ago now, and he was going to do his little business - big business, should I say - and I called out to him and he just said he was 'sorry'."
It is hoped the loo with put a stop to such incidents, but with up to 40 tourists arriving all at once on coaches to walk up Baldwin Street, one might not be enough.
The world's steepest residential road, according to Guinness World Records, Baldwin Street lies a couple of mile northeast of Dunedin's city centre. It is 350 metres long, rising from 30m to 100m above sea level. That amounts to an average gradient of 1:5, or 20 per cent. The upper half is far steeper, however, with an average slope of 1:3.41 and a maximum of 1:2.86, or 35 per cent.
Its steepness was unintentional. The city's streets were laid out in a grid pattern by planners in London with no consideration for the terrain.
Each year the Baldwin Street Gutbuster sees runners race one another from the bottom of the road to the top - and back. The course record is 1 minute 56 seconds.
Cyclists also flock to the slope to test their legs. More than 150 users of the cycling app Strava have tackled the climb, with the fastest currently Tim Chapman with a time of 1 minute 34 seconds. Kudos.
There are a number of other contenders for the title of world's steepest road, many in Britain.
Keen cyclists should be familiar with Hardknott Pass in the Lake District and Rosedale Chimney in Pickering, Yorkshire, both with maximum gradients of 1:3, or 33 per cent:
The Hardknott pass, one of the steepest roads in England with a gradient of 1 in 3 (33%).Credit: Alamy
The street Ffordd Pen Llech in Harlech, Wales, has a slope of 36.6 per cent (rounded up to 40 per cent for the vehicle warning sign), but Vale Street in Bristol is even steeper than that, if only for a few metres:
Beyond our shores there's Canton Avenue, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (37 per cent):
Eldred Street in Los Angeles (33 per cent):
Filbert and 22nd Streets in San Francisco, California (31.5 per cent):
Filbert Street, San Francisco.Credit: Alamy
And Waipio Valley Road, Hawaii (39 per cent):
Waipio Valley Road, Hawaii.Credit: Alamy
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