How Elevators (Do and Don’t) Give Us a Lift

As the elevator ascended, so too did the US economy. With elevators, bulky freight could move to higher destinations and retailers could expand upward.

But there is a downside.

Elevator Economics

Freight

To deliver a bed, sometimes you need an elevator. It can be easy now, but not during the mid-19th century.

When a bed company mechanic, Elisha Graves Otis, was asked to create a freight elevator, he knew he had to solve the snapping cables problem. At the time, a ripped cable meant a terrifying and perhaps fatal descent. Responding, in 1852, Otis invented the safety brake. During the next year, to prove that it worked, at NYC’s Crystal Palace Exposition (1854), he had someone cut the cable as his stood on a freight platform that was moving downward. Onlookers’ faces turned from horror to smiles as Otis’s safety spring prevented the platform from moving.

Below, you can see Otis and his elevator demonstration:

Retailers

We have to travel back to 1846 to find the first department store. Employing 2000 people, occupying an entire NYC block, and selling a vast array of goods, the Marble Dry-Goods Palace was the first retail establishment to gather such variety under one roof. In 1862, when it moved to an 8-story building, the elevator entered the story.  Otis’s safety brake enabled stores to expand upward. And having multiple floors meant we could have department stores.

Our Bottom Line: The Downside

But elevators have a cost that many of us have experienced.

In most buildings, elevators continue in the same direction when occupied or picking someone up. Then, if all requests for a certain direction are satisfied, the elevator waits for the new call. While skyscrapers have more complex algorithms, they also can create what one paper called, “elevator pain.”

Our elevator pain is composed of wait time and travel time. Together they equal our journey time. Our wait time starts when we enter the lobby and ends when the elevator arrives. Then, travel time begins and continues uneventfully to our destination or there might be several stops if other riders enter and exit.

Researchers have quantified the pain we experience during each segment of our journey time. They concluded that the wait time is the unhappiest part. Otherwise, it’s the stops that we most dislike:

In addition, we do not have enough elevators. Attributed to the labor and regulatory cost of elevators, especially in smaller buildings, the U.S. needs more:

My sources and more: Thanks to the Conversable Economist for inspiring today’s post. Then, for more, this paper had the facts on elevator wait times and this one had the pain index. (Please note that today we’ve included some parts of past econlife posts.)