Melbourne is an accessible city from several perspectives. Specifically planned with a rectangular street layout, streets meet at right angles making orientation straightforward. Footpaths on main thoroughfares are wide with plenty of seating provided. Melbourne’s “lanes” are narrower often with difficult footpaths to negotiate where they intersect with driveways and other lanes. However it is in
these Lanes that you will find interesting architecture, great cafes and shopping. Melbourne City Council has improved street access for wheelchairs, prams and people with mobility difficulties by ensuring crossovers or kerb ramps are in place at nearly all intersections.
The Melbourne CBD Mobility Map identifies the easiest and uninterrupted path of travel along city streets. It is published annually by the City of Melbourne & Melway Publishing and includes the locations of accessible toilets, on-street disabled persons car parking spaces and accessible commercial car parks, accessible pay phones and public TTY phones. It also contains useful leads to further sources of information. Copies and about Melbourne CBD Accommodation are available at Melbourne Town Hall, the Victorian Visitor Information Centre or by phoning 9658 9658.
City intersections are normally equipped with audio pedestrian crossing signals. Directional tactile ground surface indicators (tactile tiles) lead from the building line identifying tram stops along Swanston Street and its major intersections: Flinders, Collins, Bourke, Lonsdale and La Trobe Streets. Directional tiles (featuring raised lines) run from the building line to the kerbside and hazard tiles (raised dots) indicate kerbsides, stopping points and tram zones.
The city’s topography consists of several undulations leading down to the Yarra River – the highest point is La Trobe St and Russell St and the lowest point along Flinders St. Gradients in the main shopping and entertainment precincts around the Mall, the centre of the city, are not significant until you move outside the Mall, i.e. east or west along Bourke St or North up Swanston St.
