Elevators in an age of higher towers and bigger cities | Hacker News Reader

Elevators in an age of higher towers and bigger cities

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44 pointsprostoalex20 comments

The Shanghai Tower, the second tallest building (just got finished), has the fastest elevator in the world. The Burj Khalifa, while it's the highest skyscrapper, the top spire contains nothing, the visitor platform in the Shanghai Tower is located higher elevation. The Shanghai Tower visitor platform is at floor 118 (546m), a restaurant is at floor 119.

Trying out the fastest elevator, I am spoiled, now every other elevator feels so damn slow. It feels like taking off in an airplane, it also has similar slight effects on your ears.

The best elevator I ever used was in Beijing. One would select the floor to visit and it would allocate an elevator grouping you with everyone who wants to go to the same floor or +1/-1 floor. Unused elevators would go back to level 1.

These systems are used in NYC

I have recurring dreams of being in elevators that move sideways. Probably watching too much Star Trek as a kid.

Rode in a mineshaft elevator recently. Not for the claustrophobic. Pitch black and two levels; you load one group, then it moves down the shaft enough to load another group on top.

I wish that when elevators were built, they would build a spiral slide for those descending next to it. That would instantly reduce the traffic by about half considering that I believe most people would opt for the slide.

Sounds fun, so long as you're ok going all the way to the bottom, not just a lower floor :)

I think it's fair to say that in the vast, vast majority of multi-story buildings, people are only really be interested in visiting a single story (for their destination) and maybe the basement (for parking). The exception is shopping centers, which use escalators or stairs for most traffic rather than elevators.

So you'd need a ton of space for N number of slides exiting at the ground floor, where N is the total number of floors.

Unless people can enter mid slide somehow without affecting the journey of other sliders :P

Air guns at each floor. It will be great

They should open their mine shaft as a tourist attraction. Imagine - 'the hole' - and being able to venture far underground. At the visitor center at the top they could have an IMAX cinema with an orientation film:

https://youtu.be/s19xcVf5Jto?t=37s

There could be rocks for sale in the gift shop. Imaginably there could be conference center facilities and what not at the bottom of the hole, a cafe, recording studios and more, all accessible by one experimental lift.

If you happened to be in Finland and just so happened to be passing 'The Hole', would you pop by and have a cuppa in the quiet of the mineshaft, getting there on the coolest of lifts? I doubt such an attraction would challenge Disneyland or even pay for itself but I know a minority of people would go.

"Inside a glistening white elevator cab, pressurized to make my brief ride even more comfortable..."

How does that work, when it comes to getting off, unless each floor is pressurized?

A quick search finds only references to pressurized shafts, for smoke control in the event of a fire.

Pressure drops as speed increases. A rapidly (enough) moving elevator car experiences this.

Thanks - the Venturi effect, I am guessing.

There's been interest for years in elevator systems with more than one car per shaft, and in elevators that can move horizontally as well as vertically. Both Otis and ThyssenKrupp have built prototypes, but there are no passenger elevator installations yet.

There is a lift in Italy that goes horizontally and then vertically: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A739p5HkRZ8

What the world needs is the Wonkavator.

At 4 WTC, the official rule when fire breaks out is "Use the elevator". I've never heard of that before.

New elevator technology is amazing and they're extremely reliable. Perhaps the safest mode of transport, even before aircraft in people-per-km-travelled

Did anyone else find that article terribly written?

It is, the information density is annoyingly low.

on related note - any cheats for faster ride skipping floors which actually work nowadays without special key?

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