Szablyár Péter: Step by step - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2010)
When the stairs move along. the escalators of Budapest
■ The "limping"stain depth exceeding a metre. The sense of lame or limping movement is particularly strongly felt as one walks down the stairs, while it is a pleasant experience to ascend the gently inclining stairs leading to the restaurants and the bar in the lobby of the former on the first floor. There is another set of spiral stairs of a smaller diameter leading to the first floor, too, but this one is only used on the occasions of special events, even though this one is a very pretty counterpart of the other, more impressively vaulting, stairway. When the stairs move along: the escalators of Budapest The Hungarian Műizaki Lexikon (Technical Encyclopaedia) has this stern definition to offer: "a conveyor transport device of continuous operation carrying persons from one level to another, capable of bridging differences of level ranging from 4 to 40 metres while moving in either direction. Its conveyance capacity of 4 to 16 thousand persons per hour far exceeds that of other devices moving persons between levels, which is why it is used in public areas of significant pedestrian traffic (such as department stores, underground railway stations and subways).” 53
