An elevator poll

In My Humble Opinion
1

My little Pit thread about elevator abuse seems to have taken a dive into, well, the Pit, as people are swapping accusations about all sorts of stuff. (I probably got the discussion off the tracks by disparaging the motives of those who get onto a crowded descending elevator at 2 instead of walking down one flight of stairs, as the entire population of such people seems to consist of the lame, the halt, the disabled, the recently-operated-on, the stairwellphobics, etc. Not a single lazy slob among 'em. Oh, well.) Anyway, I’ll try to fashion a poll out of a less inflammatory subject:

Assume an office building is incapable of having more elevator banks added to it. The population of the building has been growing for decades, as the institution in it now has three times the occupants that originally inhabited the 16-floor building decades ago. Assume too there is no reason to fear the stairwells, which have cameras, etc. in them.

Should the institution:

a) do nothing, and ask the occupants in effect to get used to waiting five minutes for an elevator to come most of the time, except for peak hours, when the wait may be ten or fifteen minutes. (When the elevators comes, often they are too crowded to get onto, so your wait may be doubled or trebled if you have to let two or three crowded elevators pass.)

b) Step up the voluntary “elevator-awareness” policy, in which reminders about using the stairs become omnipresent (i.e., you get an e-mail every few days from the PTB about “Please use the stairs,” messages float across your monitor reminding you, etc.) This solution may not be enough unless more stringent measures are added to it. Such as:

c) Some sort of priority system is put in place: i.e., people must apply for passes to use the elevators (medical, infirm, disabled, elderly), or rules such as the “Walk one up, walk two down” rule suggested in the Pit thread be employed.

Are there any other options? Remember, I’m ruling out the option of retrofitting more elevator banks, and I’m positing that the one thing every occupant agrees on is that the present system is intolerable. What’s the most equitable, fair, considerate solution to this problem?

2

b.

It makes the most sense if you actually need to do something about it. If I worked at a place that said I actually couldn’t use the elevators anymore, I’d be one helluva disgruntled discontented little worker bee.

3

I’d have to say b. Hard as it is to believe, there are a lot of clueless people in the world, and they might not have even considered what pains in the asses they are being by taking the elevator one floor. Of course, there are a lot of people in the world who don’t care about other people, too. Try b. See how far it goes.

4

B.

Just cuz I saw it on the TV recently, I’ll toss out an interesting elevator idea I saw. When they were building the Petronas Towers, it didn’t look like there was going to be room for enough elevators. Their idea was to install double decker elevator cars. If you got on the elevator on the first floor, you could only go to odd number floors. If you wanted an even numbered floor, you had to get on from the second floor.

5

Just a thought here:

Why not program the elevators to only hit every other floor? Some elevators only hit odd, some only hit even, people can take either if they don’t mind walking one floor up/down as the case might be.

This would be similar to something I see in much taller buildings, segmenting elevators out by floor (1-15, 16-30, 31-45, etc.) A 16-floor building isn’t tall enough to merit that kind of breakdown, but doing evens/odds would halve the number of floors each elevator went to, it would encourage some people to take stairs (even one flight) more, and it doesn’t discriminate against people who, due to some unseen medical condition, can’t take the stairs.

An elevator designated as Freight would be separate, and would go to every floor. Only people moving objects, or those with specific visible disabilities (wheelchair, crutches, etc.), would be allowed to use this elevator. This elevator has a camera, and specific penalties would be applied to people who use this elevator for more “casual” use.

Signage would make clear which elevator is which, and all workers in the building would be equally subject to this adjustment. This way, you don’t force anybody to do things, but you provide a mild enough barrier to act as incentive/coercion to change behaviors, even if it’s just a little bit.

6

Grrrr, looks like A4aH actually beat me to it, in a way… :mad: :wink:

7

Do nothing, and let the impatient people eventually figure things out on their own.

8

I would like to see a pay per ride system, a pay for priority system or perhaps a dedicated pay-only elevator.

If you really have to get to your floor you could pony up maybe a 5 spot and get on a priority elevator. If you would like to save a few bucks you could get to work 5-10 minutes earlier and either walk up or wait till the pay customer line gets served first.

Some buildings in NYC have this as well.