They may say theirs is steeper, but he is not giving up on ours.
Dunedin surveyor Toby Stoff's campaign to return the world's steepest street crown to Baldwin St continues.
Yesterday, he enlisted the help of Global Survey New Zealand technical specialist Lennon Bedford and a Leica 3-D laser scanner.
By collecting millions of data points, the scanner was able create a very accurate and detailed surface model of the street, Mr Bedford said.
As well as the steep gradient, the surveyors had to contend with throngs of tourists making their way to the top and stopping for photos.
''It's not really a problem when they keep moving but when they stand in the middle of the road it creates shadows in the data,'' Mr Bedford said.
Once the data was analysed they would know exactly how steep the street was, within one or two millimetres.
It would reinforce Mr Stoff's survey of the street last week which found it had a maximum gradient of 34.7%, slightly lower than the 35% usually cited.
''We can do things a bit more accurately now than they did back in the 1980s so you can round it up to 35%,'' he said.
The Clark Fortune McDonald Dunedin branch manager plans to travel to Wales later this year to survey Ffordd Pen Llech and his former Otago surveying school classmates have helped him out.
''We've got close to $5000 raised already in just two and a-bit days and the more people who jump on that the merrier.''
