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The Guinness Book of World Records has anointed Baldwin Street in Dunedin, New Zealand, the steepest street in the world.. About a fifth of a mile long, Baldwin Street ascends Signal Hill at such a dizzying gradient that road signs strongly advise tourists not to try it by car. At its steepest stretch, the roadway has a 35 percent grade: every time you take a single step up Baldwin Street, you’re about a foot higher in elevation.
Awkward thoroughfares like this one aren’t uncommon in the former British Empire, where grid layouts were often drawn by London bureaucrats thousands of miles away, not by local surveyors. Baldwin Street looks much more sensible on paper than it does in person.
Baldwin Street is so steep that asphalt would literally flow down the hill on a hot day. At the top, it has to be surfaced with concrete instead.
A local fixture and tourist favorite on the street is a neighborhood grandfather named Dave Kernahan, who runs up and down the hill no less than thirty times a day. He’s kept up this borderline-suicidal fitness program ever since he was laid off from his job in 1997. The climb is so hard on his running shoes that he sometimes goes through a pair in less than a month.
Other cities scoff at Dunedin’s Guinness fame, sure that they’re home to steeper streets than Baldwin. The most likely claim to the throne would appear to belong to Canton Avenue in Pittsburgh, which briefly reaches a 37 percent grade, though for a much shorter stretch than Baldwin Street’s long slope. If nothing else, each street can content itself with being the steepest in its own hemisphere.
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