A Stairway Grows in Vienna

It rises beside the escalator, a concrete skeleton, incomplete but unmistakable. This will not be another complicated contraption, something that can break because an errant candy wrapper gums up its works. This will be a simple pedestrian-movement enabler, stationary, providing additional caloric expenditure. This will be, in short, a stairway.

It has been in progress for months now but I've only just noticed it recently. And yesterday, as I rode up the escalator, I saw the risers in place, saw the sawtooth concrete waiting for its tread.

So I googled the project, learned that it is called the Vienna Station Mezzanine Stairs, that it was approved more than two years ago and that $2 million has been allotted to complete it. Two million? For a flight of stairs?

Then I think about it for a minute. As the quick, electronic and virtual become more prominent, the slow, the low-tech and the real will become more valuable. Way more valuable, if the Vienna stairs are any indication.


These stairs are from the Prague Castle. They have lasted centuries. They did not cost $2 million.