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Comment by nkrisc | Hacker News Reader

If there are stairs as an alternative to an escalator I always take the stairs unless it's completely empty or I'm carrying something very heavy. I've yet to encounter a staircase built as a part of modern, public transit infrastructure that was too long for a healthy adult to walk.

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If you'd like to encounter one, visit Covent Garden. One of London's deepest tube stations, it has a spiral staircase with 193 steps - the equivalent of a 15-storey building.

That's no problem for an athletic 30-year-old like me - but it'd probably be difficult for a tired elderly fat person wearing high heels while carrying a child and a suitcase.

I used to get my daily exercise walking the ~150 stairs at Goodge Street, and I hadn't ever thought to do the maths to turn that into a building. Strangely I'd never even consider climbing a building that tall, but as a single flight of stairs it was fine.

Yeah, this year I've been gradually getting off of the elevator in a lower storey and climbing the rest, and the turns get old really fast.

I would have liked to take those stairs when I last visited London, but I didn't want to keep my family waiting. They preferred to take the lift. At least I think it was that station. It had a lift and a very tall spiral staircase.

I guess I can call an elevator in London a lift...

Ooh, I used to do that as well. Seemed sensible since I was normally being tremendously lazy and getting the tube to there from CHX (in my flimsy defence, even before they buggered everything up around TCR station, the walk from CHX to Goodge Street was mildly unpleasant.)

They should hand out medals at the top of Covent Garden stairs. It's like a badge of honour for Londoners.

Yes I put a U in honor.

I get really disorientated doing those stairs. You get into a zone about 2/3 the way up where you just assume it goes on for ever as it's just a uniform spiral dotted with the occasional tourist who can't read "15 story building".

Here in Lisbon, we have a station with 232 steps. Fun fact: the escalators have been at least partially non-functional 144 times in 2010.

In Madrid I used to walk up the 180 steps, but they were straight. I can't do the ones of Covent Garden because of the spiral.

I I see a bottleneck at an escalator, I like to take the stairs and then watch where I would be in the bottlekneck to estimate how long it would have taken me to take the escalator to validate my choice of taking the stairs.

Also nice exercise! Stair climbing is boss.

Yes, stairs. I use stairs everywhere. However, some places don't have stairs. It seems the public transit infrastructure doesn't think there are people who can and want to walk in the cities nowadays.

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