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Comment by massysett | Hacker News Reader

Stories like this make me a bit suspicious. It reads like some publicist - for the building owners maybe? or for elevator repair companies lobbying for something? - contacted the author or the website and said "I've got a great story for you, America is in an ELEVATOR CRISIS!" At first the writer yawned, but worked on this piece sporadically when there was nothing else to do, and several months later there was a slow news day, so might as well put this up.

I can understand saying there are some issues here, but "elevator crisis"? Yeah OK.

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I was previously an elevator mechanic and the cost to keep an elevator serviced is not cheap. Major breakdowns can cost an insane amount. Insurance is extremely expensive for businesses that service elevators and its often less lucrative to service passenger elevators. Freight elevators are even more expensive and the repairs are far more frequent due to equipment tearing them up. Consider the current laws on handicap access to a building and how costly keeping these units serviced could be, just to stay compliant. Cable driven systems are most common type for buildings above 3 stories and regulations require cable changes every 5-15 years. Inspections are due every year and some areas will shut down your elevator for noncompliance. Hydraulic elevators usually require the hoistway roof removed and cranes are required. The work is dangerous and even seasoned mechanics die for making a single mistake. Dont even get me started on how the big guys like Thyssen turned their systems into proprietary designs that require special software and interface hardware, all for the sake of locking in clientele. An old dover controller was made to last and be serviced, but all the old systems are becoming more scarce each year. It may not be a crisis, but there's more to this than you think. Regulations and corporate meddling has turned a once stable ecosystem into a money pit. I'm all for the regulations, there's a reason I'm a previous elevator mechanic.

What is your opinion on machine room-less elevators? The newer ones with a relatively small motor at the top floor of the shaft or on the car? I think that they use a rubber belt? They seem slower and less sturdy to me. I prefer riding in a hydraulically- or cable-driven elevator.

It’s just Axios’ (annoying) house style. All their articles are like this.

Sounds like the author got stuck in an elevator and decided to kill time by writing about elevators on their phone.

Strong Towns writes about a lot of this stuff. America loves to build but are loathe to care about maintenance.

Something as simple as municipal cash accounting (instead of double entry accounting) is how tons of cities are finding themselves broke after a maintenance cycle without growth.

Strong towns writes that all the time. However an examination shows they are wrong. The maintenance things they write about are a small percentage of budgets and so cannot be why cities go broke. (except for cherry picked examples that do not generalize to other cities)

I'm very interested in any citations you have about where they are wrong. Not because I'm trying to nerdsnipe, but genuinely because their thesis seems incredibly plausible, and would explain the development pattern in North America over the last 70 years. If the thesis is demonstrably wrong, I don't want to be wrong, or promote incorrect things.

>The maintenance things they write about are a small percentage of budgets and so cannot be why cities go broke.

The thesis is that the maintenance things they write about are only small because they are based on significant growth of revenues. The other issue they note is that maintenance costs are non-linear, in that they are irregular from year-to-year, so large cost all hit at once, even if they are predictable.

https://www.dsm.city/departments/finance/operating_budget.ph... is the finances from the city of Des Moines. It doesn't really give a breakdown in quite the way I stated, but it appears that a large part of the city budget is not at all related to infrastructure. In the US most cities will publish their budget (It is required by law in many states) so you can dig in more if you want.

I mean, so, right away, debt service is 17% of their budget. That should immediately be a red flag. Is it the end of the world? Of course not, but that's a non-trivial part of the budget that is dedicated to interest alone which strongly inhibits the ability for the city to borrow in an emergency situation.

Again, the issues that Strong Towns addresses is that the costs are not generally visible in the budgets, because they are on a cash accounting basis, and not an accrual accounting basis. There is no balance sheet in the traditional sense, and the spending on infrastructure is non-linear. So here, there is no depreciation of infrastructure in this budget except for city automobiles. The worry that Strong Towns is exactly that the depreciation and amortization expenses will overwhelm a budget when they come due.

We know that the city has limited borrowing capacity from their most recent airport expansion, where they are giving up parking revenue to investors: https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/business/devel...

Again, if I'm wrong, I want to know, but the entire point that Strong Towns illustrates is that these cash accounting based budgets, like this one, do not illustrate future liabilities in terms of ongoing revenues.

America loved to build _in the past_. Now the workers cost too much, even when paid poorly, and the top must profit on an exponential curve.

IDK about America but in my country this has been in the news for a while. It takes months for elevators at train stations to get fixed because there is a huge shortage of parts. And this means people in wheelchairs have to crawl down the stairs to the train platform.

probably anecdotal, but I live in a new apartment building <2 years old. near CONSTANT elevator issues. 1-2 of the 3 elevators are out at a time. its been this way for a year.

can't wait for my lease to end.

Read Bernays' "Propaganda" and everything will make sense.

I don't understand. Stories like what? The article points out a problem and the risks and the consequences. What are you talking about? Is there anything you specifically object to? Do you think elevator maintenance isn't an issue in the US? Have you seen reporting elsewhere saying it isn't an issue or it's overblown? Or is this just a vibe thing? Why is the quality of HN comments becoming this bad? Your comment took zero effort to write. It's just "nuh-uh".

Did you read that article? It was light on details, made a bunch of claims without giving any indication of enough investigation to believe those are facts. I've ready many HN comments that are more believable.

I read the article. It provided pretty much all the facts required to get a sense of the problem. All Axios articles are written like this and it's great to get a no-nonsense or no fluff glimpse of a particular topic I wouldn't have found out about otherwise. If you want an exposé, this is the wrong site.

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