Small world to find this topic on FT. Not because I am an elevator buff, but because in the process of building our commercial buildings we have to visit many elevator installations to see what the market is doing. This is my MO for getting a big chunk of flight miles.

The speed fix can be had at the Jinmao Building in Shanghai. They employ an 8m/second shuttle lift to their sky lobby on the 88th floor. A true nosebleeder.

The coolest thing I have checked out lately though is Schindler's Miconic 10 system. This is used in one of the elevator banks in Rockefeller Center in NYC (as well as several other places.) It basically allocates the lift that is most appropriate for the floors requested. You key in on a panel located near the building entrances the floor you wish to go to and it calculates your likely travel time from the keypad to the lift and then allocates the next available lift to that floor call. It will not serve more than a few other contiguous floors on that call but can be used for other floors on other calls. It reduces wait time to next to nothing. The discioncerting thing is getting in the lift and seeing no buttons at all. Some companies program into their IC cards the floor that person should go to and when you wave your card over the reader by the turnstyles on the ground floor, it lets you in and calls a lift for you. Obviously a few inconveniences can happen but it is a quantum leap in elevator efficiency. If you think Swiss chocolates and tick-tocks are great, this will be right up there.

The RCC lifts in NRT are oil lifts meaning their is an oil piston below the floor pushing the lift up. It is so slow as result of this and does not smell terrific either, kind of like an escalator in need of a servicing.

Mike

[This message has been edited by mjm (edited 11-29-2000).]