Why are elevators so bad? \ stacker news ~tech

1919 sats \ 32 comments \ @kr 1 Mar tech

In 1880, the first electric elevator was invented.
In 1887, automated doors were developed.
In 1889, the first successful electric elevator was installed in a commercial building.

Has anything materially changed about elevators in the last 100 years?

It’s kind of wild that elevators are still so loud, slow, and lack simple features like “undo” buttons for accidentally pressing the wrong floor.

Why has nobody disrupted the elevator industry?

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277 sats \ 4 replies \ @petertodd 1 Mar

It’s kind of wild that elevators are still so loud, slow

Nah, modern elevators are much faster than they used to be. The first elevator was was 12m/minute. The current record holder is now 20.5m/second, a 100x increase in speed.

Sure, typical elevators haven't increased that much. But there are very real physical limits to consider: if short elevators accelerated even faster, at some point they'd put unacceptable G-forces on the people inside them.

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @kr OP 1 Mar

good points, i guess the motion of the elevator is constrained heavily by acceleration forces and building heights…

however, i still think the time it takes for an elevator to open its doors and close them on every floor it stops at (a bulk of the total trip time in a tall building) is way too slow.

surely we could use cameras to detect when people were at risk of getting doors closed on them (rather than the in-door lasers), and when the coast is clear the doors could quickly shut. i still find myself smashing the door close button every time i get in an elevator.

331 sats \ 2 replies \ @petertodd 1 Mar

You know how Star Trek always has those fast opening and closing doors?

I uses to know a guy who worked on props, and actually helped design and build those doors. He said they were terrifying, as there was simply no way to build them sufficiently light weight to not have the potential to seriously injure someone if they accidentally closed on you. It was bad enough that they had to carefully choreograph ever scene where someone walked through the doors, along with multiple independent people actually operating them to make sure one person screwing up wouldn't be enough to result in an injury.

Again, physics screws you over. A robust door is heavy, and that much mass moving that fast is enough momentum to seriously hurt you if the sensors ever fail.

10 sats \ 1 reply \ @kr OP 2 Mar

i can’t say i’ve ever seen star trek, but i hear you on the safety problems with fast-moving doors 😅

79 sats \ 0 replies \ @petertodd 2 Mar

Well, you need to watch Star Trek Next Generation. DS9 and Voyager would be good too.

STNG was my childhood!

185 sats \ 3 replies \ @Undisciplined 1 Mar

Great question! There's some really interesting stuff about how elevators constrain the height of buildings, but maybe not for the reasons you'd think.

Basically, as buildings get taller they need more elevators for logistical reasons and each elevator takes up a share of the cross sectional area. At some point, you're losing too much floor area to justify going taller.

Do other countries have substantially better elevators?

41 sats \ 2 replies \ @kr OP 1 Mar

Do other countries have substantially better elevators?

i used to live in a building that was 66 stories tall and its elevator was much faster than most (even the doors closed quickly).

However, the quick closing doors would occasionally bump into slow-moving residents on their way in, which kind of negated the speed improvements.

474 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined 1 Mar

Somehow, the answer to your question has to be that building owners aren't paying a price for having crummy elevators.

There are some interesting factors in real estate that people don't price in when buying, but later realize they don't like. The two examples that come to mind are closet space and basements in residential real estate. I've heard that both of those are declining, because people don't pay attention to them while house hunting.

41 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr OP 1 Mar

good points, people are so fixated on square footage and number of bedrooms that they also neglect hard-to-quantify aspects of a home like who the architect was

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/to-buy-cheap-art-buy-architecture/

169 sats \ 3 replies \ @mixmaster 1 Mar

I have seen an elevator where you could undo by pressing the button 2 times.

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @kr OP 1 Mar

haha no way, i’ve never come across one of those. where was it?

33 sats \ 1 reply \ @mixmaster 1 Mar

I forgot the exact place, but it was definitely in Germany.

The thing is, how often did you try pressing the button twice after pressing it by mistake? Maybe there are some where you can long press too to cancel, I don't know. We should all try it more often :D

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr OP 1 Mar

i’ll be trying this from now on 😂

243 sats \ 1 reply \ @m00ninite 2 Mar

Have you seen that old building with the elevator that moves an entire room? It's designed for the CEO of a building to move between floors and it's kinda freaking amazing.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr OP 2 Mar

lmao that’s wild!

123 sats \ 4 replies \ @PoolcleanerSteve 2 Mar

No mention of the mirrors installed to reduce the perceived wait time

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @kr OP 2 Mar

ohhh, didn’t realize that’s why they were installed but it makes sense

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @Bell_curve 2 Mar

How do mirrors trick you about waiting time?

10 sats \ 1 reply \ @PoolcleanerSteve 2 Mar

There is plenty of research. Possibly just bullshit numbers. The mirrors reduce wait time perception, phones don’t usually have signal in the elevator, makes the box feel bigger.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Bell_curve 2 Mar

Thanks

I knew about alleviate claustrophobia

https://www.scienceabc.com/eyeopeners/why-do-elevators-have-mirrors.html

87 sats \ 2 replies \ @oliverweiss 1 Mar

Do double-deck elevators count as an enhancement? Anyway, no matter how bad they are, just imagine to carry two kids to the sixth floor.

When I visited Taipei I went to the 101 skyscraper to try the fastest elevator in the world (at least at that time). It was nah. Elevator.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @kr OP 1 Mar

never heard of double deck elevators!

87 sats \ 0 replies \ @oliverweiss 1 Mar

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-deck_elevator

Not suitable for most buildings though.

79 sats \ 1 reply \ @DudeJLebowski 2 Mar

Try building a business case for replacing something that already works in a business with a low profit margin..

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr OP 2 Mar

you’re right that once an elevator is installed, it’s a nearly impossible task to get a building to upgrade it… i just figure at some point one of the major manufacturers would try to introduce new features to win new properties

69 sats \ 0 replies \ @Krv 2 Mar

Investigate government regulations. The need for safety is always used to cripple industries, mainly for preventing competition against the incumbents.

69 sats \ 0 replies \ @knorozov 2 Mar

Imagine what would happen if there was an undo button in the elevator... they probably tried that.

69 sats \ 0 replies \ @m00ninite 2 Mar

There are some things in life you want to be pretty boring. I don't think I want a bunch of "move fast and break things" companies disrupting the elevator industry. I'm perfectly happy getting between my floors in the most boring way possible, even if a "better" one could get me there 6 seconds faster or with slightly better button/door experience.

69 sats \ 0 replies \ @PoolcleanerSteve 2 Mar

If ya’ll want to go down a rabbit hole. This is a good watch from defcon

69 sats \ 0 replies \ @Bell_curve 2 Mar

Medical buildings have slow elevator and long wait times relative

10 sats \ 1 reply \ @kr OP 1 Mar

don’t even get me started on the random letters and icons on every elevator button panel…

https://www2.isye.gatech.edu/~jjb/misc/elevators/images/delta-terminal-lax.jpg

24 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr OP 1 Mar

apparently these labels are in the elevator located in the Delta Airlines terminal of LAX and they mean:

M: Mezzanine
P: Planes
O: Operations
C: Chunnel (which is actually just a tunnel, nobody knew why it was called a chunnel)

https://www2.isye.gatech.edu/~jjb/misc/elevators/elevators.html