Street steeped in denial

Travellers, tour operators and the city council are disregarding the record books as crowds continue to climb a Dunedin street internationally recognised as being ‘‘pretty steep’’.

If they were not already familiar with the saga, urban climbers visiting Baldwin St yesterday would not have known its steepest street title was unceremoniously snatched away in July.

Multiple ‘‘world’s steepest street’’ signs still guide tourists to its entrance.

Sarah Ruston, who manages the nearby Steep Cafe, said tour buses were still dropping people there daily.

If anything, tourism had increased in the last few months.

‘‘We’ve also noticed there have even been some people from Wales coming in especially.’’

Dunedin surveyor Toby Stoff had issues with the way the new title holder, Wales’ Ffordd Pen Llech, was measured.

He re-surveyed both streets and concluded Baldwin St was steeper on average and will write a report stating this to Guinness World Records.

For now tourists are still climbing the street.

Yesterday, Italian man Andrea Sciaba said he knew about the title being stripped, but it did not affect his desire to climb the street.

‘‘Yeah I read about it, but I really don’t care. There is a tiny difference.’’

French couple Kevin Weiss and Ella Difraya said they were also undeterred and were still curious about climbing the famous street.

‘‘We’ve been up steep landscapes so we wanted to compare it to what we already did. And it’s pretty steep,’’ Ms Difraya said.

Enterprise Dunedin director John Christie said the council recognised the title had been stripped, but wanted to let Mr Stoff’s challenge take its course before making any changes.

‘‘If the challenge is unsuccessful that’s when we’ll make changes to marketing and signage.’’

Dunedin i-Site visitor centre manager Louise van de Vlierd said she did not think anything had changed with its popularity.

‘‘To be honest I don’t know how the individual tour operators are handling it. No-one has called us up saying they’ve taken it off their itineraries.’’

In a way it did not matter what the record books said.

‘‘It’s been the steepest street for so long, I think it’s going to take a long time for that to go away.’’

jono.edwards@odt.co.nz