• Each elevator carries an average of 20,000 passengers per year. The average number of people per elevator ride is five. The average length of a typical elevator rise is 40 feet (12m), or four or five floors. In New York, the average elevator trip takes 118 seconds.
• When an elevator is overloaded, it will not move. The doors remain open, and a buzzer might go off until enough people get off.
• It’s been estimated that Americans travel more miles yearly by elevators and escalators than all rail and air miles combined.
• One of the world’s most remarkable elevators is at AngloGold Ashanti’s Mponeng Gold Mine in South Africa. Not only is it the world’s longest elevator, dropping 7,490 feet (1.4 miles/2.3 km) in a single plunge (4.5 times further than those in the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world), but it’s also one of the world’s fastest, making the journey in just three minutes, moving at 40 mph (64 kph). Each car carries about 120 workers.
• The Zhangjiajie National Forest Park in China features the Bailong Elevator. This lift, whose name means “hundred dragons,” is the world’s tallest outdoor elevator. Each of the three glass elevator cars carries up to 50 tourists at a time, lifting them 1,070 feet (326m) up the side of a sheer cliff in less than two minutes. At the top, visitors get an impressive view.
• In the running for the slowest elevator in the world would be the Rising Tide Elevator Bar. This elevator is located on the cruise ship Oasis of the Seas, with identical models installed on several of her sister ships, which are the world’s largest cruise ships. The large oval open elevator is shaped like a barge and rises very slowly from the ship’s Central Park deck to the Royal Promenade, taking nearly ten minutes to go the short distance. The reason is that the elevator doubles as a cocktail lounge which seats 35 people.
• Do the “close door” buttons on elevators really work? Well, the answer is “usually no.” They used to, but in 1990 the Americans With Disabilities Act was passed, which regulated certain things in elevators. The buttons needed to be marked in Braille; there needed to be audible tones indicating when the elevator was arriving and departing (one chime when it’s going up and two chimes when it’s going down); and the doors were required to remain open long enough for a disabled person to board. Many “close door” buttons were deactivated at that time.
• The average lifespan of an elevator is about 25 years, and most have long since been replaced by elevators with fake “door close” buttons. However, if you’re in the U.K., the button probably does function.
• Pressing the “call” button repeatedly doesn’t do any good. Once the button is pressed the first time, the call is registered.
• A popular show called “Candid Camera” confronted ordinary citizens with odd situations while their reactions were secretly filmed. In 1962, one of the show’s antics involved an elevator. In the stunt, an unwitting participant pressed the elevator button. When the elevator opened, everyone inside the elevator (actually all actors in on the joke) were facing the rear of the elevator instead of the front. Most of the people being pranked likewise turned to face the elevator’s back wall. Social psychologists often cite this anecdote as a demonstration of how quickly social norms can be reversed.
• An engineering firm calculated that for a lifelong city dweller who uses an elevator an average of 8 times a day, the odds of being trapped in an elevator are 1 in 5,000 monthly. Over the course of 25 years, the odds work out to 1 in 17, meaning it’s somewhat likely for a long-time city dweller to get trapped in an elevator at least once in their lifetime.
