Manningham Council have approved this roller coaster footpath in the front of the five storey apartment development at  8-10 Hepburn Road, Doncaster despite objections from residents.

8-10 Hepburn Road 1.
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8-10 Hepburn Road 2.
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Footpaths  San Francisco
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“Angela”, who lives close to the  building, contacted Councillor Dot Haynes who declared that if the footpath did not to conform to regulations it would have to  be ripped up and replaced. The council engineer, who inspected the site admitted it was not ideal, but had indicated the footpath could not be built on an even plane because of a problem with the design of the building’s entry levels

Cr Dot Haynes

Angela said; “A footpath was constructed this week outside the new development at 8-10 Hepburn Road. Upon walking past it today, I immediately became concerned of its unsightly appearance and inherent safety issues. All the roads and nature strips in our neighbourhood follow the lay of the land and therefore our footpaths should follow suit”.

“All developments abutting these road reserves should match these control levels.  In this case the opposite appears to have happened, creating a roller coaster effect which will become a serious safety issue for our not so abled members of our community.

Overall a very lazy and poor design outcome. A possible compromise to reduce this extreme variation in level changes, is to realign the path to at least not to match the front entry steps, ( steps can easily be modified to match the new path levels) but to match the new driveway and the other levels set at the opposite boundary”.

Pinnacle Apartments
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“On behalf of my family and neighbours who are very upset of this latest ugly scare in our neighbourhood, I strongly suggest that you act on this request before it becomes a precedent for the remaining developments which are about to come online. Even in San Francisco where many streets exceed a 30% slope, footpath gradients are still designed to follow the slope of adjacent streets”.

Aerial View Of Frisco Sts
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David, who lives in Gilmore Road, said; “This project does not accord with other developments in the area where I walk even in steep streets such as Grange Park Drive and Winbrook Court  where the slope of the footpaths still correspond exactly with the street gradients”. The design of the driveways incorporate what architects call a “warped plane” which allows the entry point of a development to remain level with a twist in the driveway to line up with the slope of the footpath”.