An escalator over half a mile long has opened in the Chinese municipality of Chongqing, stretching up through the hilly urban landscape.
The escalator, named "Goddess," seems to soar into the heavens. This incredible architectural structure runs through the center of Wushan, starting at the foot of a steep slope and rising straight up, almost touching the sky. Even video footage struggles to convey its scale and impressive grandeur.
According to the Financial Times, the ascent from start to finish takes nearly 21 minutes. It is likely the longest outdoor escalator of its kind in the world.
"As far as I know, there are no similar projects in the country — neither larger in scale than ours, nor equal to it, nor under construction, nor previously launched," said Huang Wei, the head of the project team and an engineer at China Railway Eryuan Engineering Group. "This is the first of its kind."
The "Goddess" escalator is not a single continuous belt: it consists of about two dozen separate escalators and elevators, combined into a unified system. The moving staircases were manufactured by the Swiss company Schindler at a factory in the northern part of Shanghai. The Chinese division of the company supplied around 1,400 escalators for the Chongqing metro system.
The project has already become popular, although the city is known for its iconic "Crown" escalator built in the 1990s. Reports indicate that about 9,000 residents of Wushan use the "Goddess" daily, paying approximately $0.43 for a one-way trip. During last month's Spring Festival, the escalator was used by 450,000 people, officials reported.
