"Going Up" At 45 Mph: Hitachi To Deliver World's Fastest Elevator 109
Zothecula (1870348) writes "Hitachi has announced that it's installing the world's fastest ultra-high-speed elevators in the Guangzhou CTF Finance Centre skyscraper in Guangzhou, China. Making up two out of a total of 95 elevators in the building, Hitachi says the new lifts use a range of technologies to produce record-breaking speeds of 1,200 m/min while still meeting the necessary standards of safety and comfort."
Expensive (Score:4, Informative)
High speed elevators are stupidly expensive.
I was looking at apartments a while back and at one of the buildings there was some ongoing construction.
Somehow I ended up getting shown around by one of the head contractors who told me that the building was supposed to have four medium speed elevators, but they got permission to knock it down to 3 high speed elevators, which would move the equivalent # of people per arbitrary unit of time.
The kicker was that those 3 elevators were about 1/4th the total budget of the entire building.
So based on that, I'm guessing that TFA's 95 elevators are a respectable portion of the price for that new tower in China.
Re:Express elevators (Score:4, Informative)
Some of these towers have an upper lobby. So you take the express from 1 to 75, then a 'local' from 76 to 100.
Usually the 'important people' are on the top floors so the elevator ratio is better and there's little waiting in the upper lobby. Unless you stop at the bar.
Once in a blue moon there's an express to the penthouse, but to pay for an entire express elevator entirely in the rent of the penthouse apartment isn't feasible for all but the ultra-ultra rich.
Re:Expensive (Score:4, Informative)