Residential lane
A quiet, narrow street aligned to the rear of residential properties for service access, paired with parallel residential streets that can be designed for safer and more continuous links for people to walk and cycle.
Little Young Street Redfern features a range of dwelling types, ranging from rear access garages and gates to frontages for studios and flats. The residents have lined the lane with plants in pots and in the ground, making the space more appealing and distinct.
Residential lanes are two-way, very low-volume, very slow speed service streets to the rear of residential lots.
The street reserve is approximately 6–7m wide, with no car parking.
These lanes are common in pre-war neighbourhoods, and recently in new residential subdivisions for blocks with narrow lots to avoid garage dominance on front streetscape or serve access-denied properties.
In residential areas, laneways can make active transport on facing streets safer by removing the need for driveways and eliminating conflict between people walking or cycling and drivers.
Urban context
Little William Street, Stockton
- Typical street reserve: 6–7m
- Property access: rear access to properties, often narrow lots with terraces or semi-detached houses; occasional retrofitted studio flats
- No car parking
- Use: service garages and garbage collection. Preserves front address for presentation and streetscape. Popular cycle routes if in busy area. Often functions like a shared zone.
- Design elements: fully paved, upright kerbs, utilitarian materials. No landscape but often ‘borrow’ tree canopy from private lots. Usually no lighting
Suburban context
- Typical street reserve: 7–8m
- Property access: rear access to properties, often narrow lots with terraces or semi-detached houses. Some laneways feature secondary dwellings such as 'Fonzie’ flats with an address fronting the laneway
- No car parking.
- Use: service garages and garbage collection. Preserves front address for presentation and streetscape. Torrens title lots require public lanes. Often functions like a shared zone.
- Design elements: flush environment; paving material variable depending on estate development; lighting; occasional columnar trees
Drawings
Section (2010s new residential estate example)
Residential lane section.
Plan (2010s new residential estate example)
Residential lane plan.
Common issues
- Misguided concept of providing a wider lane than functionally necessary (e.g. for frontage type streetscape or contingency spaces for garbage collection vehicles or for street type planting) creates an awkward mix of street and lane, or a ‘strane’. ‘Stranes’ attracts rogue car parking, often compromising vehicle manoeuvring from neighbours’ garages and a confusing driving environment.
- Services and design detailing of building facades with zero setbacks not known in planning or resolved in design, requiring poor solutions in construction.
- Garbage bin storage inadequate or inconvenient, resulting in bins staying permanently in lanes.
- Design confusion about lanes needing high quality public domain finishes increases costs and discourages their use in subdivisions, resulting in streets dominated by garages and driveways.
- Very long, straight legs without design details or passive surveillance can raise security and speeding concerns.
Design solutions
Low complexity
- Continuous footpath treatment to reinforce pedestrian priority at driveways
- Painted threshold to reinforce pedestrian priority at intersections
- Shared zone to maximise space available for staying, walking and cycling
Medium complexity
- Trees placed in parking lane to maximise canopy and narrow the perceived corridor
- Raised platform with tree planting aligned with lane marking to contribute to the street composition
- Slow point with planting to contribute to the street composition
- Raised crossing to reinforce pedestrian priority at intersections
- Mid-block street closure to restrict through-movement for some modes
High complexity
- Intersection treatments (content to come in next version of the guide)