58 Replies to “Sunday Movie: North America’s Elevator Problem”

  1. very interesting so apparently there’s a
    * elevator duopoly in north america
    * stricter than usual elevator requirements mean much larger elevators required in america versus other countries for small apartments. which eventually means either a) no elevator or b) no apartment built

    im kinda curious what our building developer commentators agree with this analysis or have anything to add

    1. Tacomee might have more or better data points, but I will give you one. Last year I was looking at doing an expansion and remodel of an existing structure into an DADU. I was given a back of the napkins estimate by an architect that was north of $100k for an elevator in that structure. We decided not to do the project. That’s one less elder friendly unit on the market.

      1. Oh no, I’d say $100k is the starting point for an elevator of any size. Some of it is the couple of companies that have a corner on the market, and some of is the asshats at the fire department. In Germany the paramedics would just carry grandpa down the stairs. Elevators here have to be full stretcher sized.

        Of course if the building doesn’t have any elevators, the paramedics are still carrying grandpa down the stairs. Personally I think fire departments are often completely on some sort of big ego trip. So instead of building multistory housing in California towns because of fire and other code regulations… let’s build houses out in hills in wildfire zones!

        As far as elevators go… I’m pretty sure Denmark has its code written in English. Just use that and be done with it. Or better yet, use the regulations AND elevators from South Korea. Easy shipping to Washington State.

      2. A 3-story building is about as high as would be desirable for a multi-family or apartment building without an elevator. What would the design look like for a 3-story building with storefront retail or ADA accessible living space on the ground floor and 2 levels above for homes or apartments? Without parking or elevators, the design/build costs would be pretty low compared to the larger steel and concrete structures that include parking, multiple elevators, gyms and common areas in their costs.

        In neighborhoods with good transit, parks and walkable retail, a 3-story building wouldn’t be out of character if it replaced a split-level rambler or other single-family home. Seattle’s zoning seems to only allow very tall buildings or single-family homes. There are plenty of neighborhoods near good transit that could evolve nicely with 3-story construction projects. The lack of development along the 1 Line in Rainier Valley has been baffling to me. Maybe instead of building everything 6-stories tall, we should look to build at the 3-story height beyond a certain distance from major transit nodes. Afterall, much of San Francisco’s density is in neighborhoods with 2 and 3 story buildings.

      3. For small scale building, a Live-Work unit is often a good approach for ground level unit, that those units can toggle between street level retail and housing (or be both) over time. Also, sometimes the Live/Work is 2 stories, with the upper level as “private” space, such as living space or back-office space.

    2. NA Elevator industry is more like an oligopoly, there’s Otis, ThyssenKrupp, KONE, Schindler, and Mitsubishi Electric who make up the vast majority of Elevator manufacturing currently in NA. We used to have a few other manufacturers like Montgomery Elevator, Marshall Elevator, Dover, and Westinghouse before they were consolidated and merged with the current players.

      – Montgomery merged with KONE in the 80s (Canada) and 90s (US)
      – Marshall was sold to Otis
      – Dover was acquired by Thyssen in 1999, which Thyssen then merged with Krupp the same year to create ThyssenKrupp
      – Westinghouse Elevator Division was bought by Schindler in the 80s

      There’s also the issue of Elevator Technican Unions who are notorious for gatekeeping their little industry with an iron fist and honestly to their own detriment. They let very few apprenticeship with them at their locals shops each year even though the industry badly needs more technicians, along with have a reputation for nepotism for people who they do allow to apprentice with them. They have fogut against reforms to allowing repairing and building elevators offsite.

      Some people cite ADA as an issue but honestly it’s only an issue for smaller complexs with single digit units where a 1 person elevators would be useful for saving space around a flight of stairs but can’t be built because of the particulars around ADA, like a wheelchair needs be able to rotate 360 in an elevator whereas in Europe and Asia its more like the wheelchair just needs to be able to roll in and out of the cab. It’s why most European elevators put their keypads on the left or right side of their cabs rather than the front for ease of access for wheelchair passangers.

  2. I walked around the new trolley wire installation project on Madison and Union yesterday. New wire is being hung between Broadway and 16th Ave on Madison and there is some work started on Union. Clearly, this new wire will restore trolley service on Route 2 when completed. There also is some wire that will someday support Route 12.

    The unexpected part of the project is that it starts at Broadway. It looks like Metro has decided to deadhead trolleys on the 2 (and eventually the 12) to/from base via the Broadway/Boren/Jackson wire instead of via downtown.

    I’m wondering if Metro will have the project done, tested and operational by March 28 or will the re-introduction of trolleys on the 2 have to wait until September.

      1. I don’t expect Metro to shift the 2 to Madison. The new wire will facilitate trolleys going to and from base at the beginning and end of their runs.

        I can’t remember all the turns and twists of the network in downtown Seattle, but it must be a convoluted route for trolleys to get to Madrona for the first block in the day. It might require heading north on 3rd Avenue to Virginia St. and then heading back south to Spring St. and then deadheading all the way Madrona Park. The new wire might seem extravagant, but if it saves 10 minutes a day/6 times a day for 20 years, the investment might be worthy.

    1. Thanks. I intend to start putting links to new Page 2 articles in the roundup and movie articles because people forget Page 2 exists (including me). Yesterday we were thinking so much about the simulated service suspension all day that I forgot to write today’s article, so Nathan stepped in to do it and didn’t know I intended to put in a link.

      Page 2 was used more extensively in the past. If you go back through the index, you’ll find that Martin, Ross, and I all started on Page 2. In 2022 there was a generational change in STB editors, and the new regime hasn’t used Page 2 much because we got several new authors who were able to go directly to Page 1, and we haven’t gotten many offers for Page 2 type articles.

      Page 2 in general is a place for new authors to start out where we’re not sure about their ideas or writing quality yet, concepts that need more thinking and debate before we’re ready to put them on Page 1 (the first gondola and funicular articles were on Page 2), opposition viewpoints (none have been submitted), or authors who must remain behind a pseudonym for one reason or other.

      1. You don’t allow articles by pseudonyms, so I’ve never written one. That may be true for others as well.

      2. As Mike pointed out, we allow Page 2 articles by pseudonyms, so if you are interested, let us know.

      3. The policy may have been refined after you spoke with us, and Page 2 may not have come up at the time. If you want to write on Page 2 as Tom Terriffic, let us know.

  4. If done one wants to install an elevator in their multistory home, they have inexpensive options. The challenge is what to do for elevators in apartment buildings that get more use but are still not seeing heavy use. I remember looking in short lifts for home wheelchair use and found that there were many manufacturers.

    The bookend of that was the highrise projects built as multistory US public housing between 1945 and 1970 with only one elevator prone to then being out of service. They contributed greatly to the need to demolish many of them.

    The challenge to me looks like it could be addressed with a “shared private” or midway elevator category. I’m not in the industry so I can’t say how that affects regulated size (full wheelchair circulation? stretchers?) or safety or speed or power method, but I could value in having such a category.

    Related to this, I wonder if it would save money to build elevators inside their enclosures mostly off-site, with a final calibration to floor elevations once brought in on anctruck and installed. The custom aspect of installation looks to me like it contributes to the higher cost and longer replacement timeframe.

    1. If done one wants to install an elevator in their multistory home, they have inexpensive options. The challenge is what to do for elevators in apartment buildings that get more use but are still not seeing heavy use.

      That’s pretty much my experience. When we remodeled to make an ADU wheel wheelchair accessible a “lift” was easy. The difference seems to be a lift was “open air” rather than an enclosed shaft. Of course when you get into true multi family it’s going to be more strict. You have to be able to get people out if there’s a fire!

  5. My 26 floor building has 3 elevators. L2 passengwe and one very large freight. They were originally made by Fujitec who seems to have very little interest 8n servicing rhem. The last few l years we’ve had several instances where one or 2 were down for several months while we waited for parts or installation. It seems to be a common situation although ST seems to be doing better in the dstt. Their new elevators seem as fragile as the old ones which I find a little counterintuitive l.

  6. At Pike Place Market there’s a pair of elevators at Stewart Street that go down to the Overlook Walk, the parking levels, and residential apartments. Yesterday I took one down to the Walk and back. The other one was out of order, so we all had to wait for that one. On the way back, somebody entered from the apartments and said the other elevator had been out of order for months, and that it adds half an hour of waiting every day for him, because of the large numbers of visitors and strollers that fill the elevator all the time.

      1. I would rather have a regional transit hub at 521 Stadium Pl S, that parking lot is underused and needs some serious redeveloping. Our goal is to get riders to use transit to Lumen Field, not pay to park so… Just build “Seattle TC” there, on the west side of the former parking lot can be the bus pickup/drop off and the layover, and the east side of the former lot can have a pay to park garage with 1,170 stalls and 5 stories for the transit center. This transit center could be considered in ST4 and would have great ties to light rail, Sounder, the ferry, and bus routes.

    2. I think this is related to ST3’s Westlake2 station or Ballard Westlake terminus alternative. ST may have mentioned a regional transit hub somewhere. This may be part of trying to get DSTT2 in the door, so I would be wary of city actions that depend on it and lock it in place now.

      1. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Westlake may be a high ridership station, but one thing for sure is that even if it’s in Downtown Seattle it should not be a regional hub with a transit center and blah blah blah. A regional hub would work better at 521 Stadium Pl S than Westlake ever could…

        But one thing for sure is that Seattle NEEDS A REGIONAL TRANSIT HUB!!!

      2. @scooby foo

        Why would the transit hub be at the sports stadium lol. Not even next to the Chinatown light rail station.

        I guess it might have made sense if the Ballard link’s second Chinatown station was there

      3. I mean it’s one of the only empty lots in the downtown area, sweet relief that they didn’t build the second station for Ballard Link there. It works well as a regional hub because you get:
        – All buses downtown are redirected here.
        – Easy access to the stadiums.
        – A direct connection to Sounder and a short walk to light rail.
        – A short walk to the waterfront and streetcar.
        – A large transit center and a paid parking garage with 1,170 stalls.
        – A chance to turn an underused paid parking lot for Lumen into a regional hub.
        – A tie to the industrial area and the downtown areas of Seattle.

        So would you use this new transit center often? Given the uses I told you.

      4. Goblin you are bizarrely trying to force a parking lot in the city that can be a hub for everything while also emphasizing redevelopment potential (relevance???).

        CID at Union Station should be a hub. This spot gets you streetcar, king street station, many existing bus routes, light rail and hopefully 2nd downtown tunnel.
        Westlake should also be ANOTHER hub (believe it or not a city can have more than 1 transit hub). Gets all the busses, streetcar, light rail, monorail (Seattle center is more important than stadiums IMO), pike place market.

      5. @scooby

        Just to clarify is your hub idea building a new bus terminal and parking garage at that lot?

      6. WL, yes.

        So my proposal basically builds a transit center in the current Lumen Field parking lot with a new 1,170 stall five story pay to park garage to make up all that lost parking, which would be an option for people going to the stadium who don’t want to take transit.

      7. “All buses” are “redirected” to a lot to which access is ONLY available by South Jackson west of Fourth South????? What kind of traffic jam are you trying to create? And “Why?”

        Every event at Lumen Field would be a huge headache for such a plan.

        I was there the night the old Kingdome opened with about twenty shuttle buses lined up to take people home after the event. This was to be a “demonstration” of The Plan for Kingdome event transit.

        The buses all filled up in five minutes and than could not move for thirty minutes in the sea of other potential riders surrounding them and waiting for the ones down Occidental Street waiting for their places in the lineup.

        It was a fiasco and quickly replaced by switching to use of the regular buses on First and Fourth South to move people notth to their regular routes in downtown, a practice which persists to today, augmented by Link at Stadium Station.

        I’m sorry, but you don’t run buses into a cul-de-sac, which this parking lot is.

      8. First of all, I propose multiple entrances and possibly bays on Occidental to handle that bus jumbling. And second of all I could suggest building fences between the stadium and the transit hub. You’re redeveloping the lot and not keeping it, though you’d build a five story 1,170 stall pay to park garage next to the TC.

      9. Westlake and ID can both be regional hubs. It’s typical for major cities to have multiple hubs*; what is important is frequent transit between nodes, which Seattle will have with 2 lines running in the DSTT.

        *Some of this is historical, e.g. Chicago’s major Metra stations are outside of the CTA Loop because that’s where the terminals are, and some of this is intentional, like a Soviet triangle. (https://pedestrianobservations.com/2018/01/16/transit-and-scale-variance-part-2-soviet-triangles/)

        Part of the region WSBLE is a crappy line is planners/politicians think all Link lines need to serve both hubs (ID + Westlake). If we had new line that instead was Ballard-Westlake-First Hill-Judkins-Mt Baker, that would be a solid “Soviet Triangle” approach, where every line has a strong transfer to each other without needing to converge at a single station.

  8. The problem with infill housing is if it’s too expensive or hard to build, it just doesn’t get done. Here’s a webpage from our friends in Albuquerque featuring “casita” style housing. (ADU for the rest of the County). Really great stuff here, affordable and quick to build.

    https://www.cabq.gov/planning/accessory-dwelling-unit/free-casita-construction-plans

    For a small fee you can get the actual plans for a “shovel ready” 750 sq ft ADU plan! It’s a pretty good system overall Albuquerque has set up, but maybe requiring less square footage of yard for each ADU? Smaller yard spaces would need a more robust drainage plan? There are environmental factors here I don’t completely understand that are unique to New Mexico.

    2. “The problem with infill housing is if it’s too expensive or hard to build, it just doesn’t get done.”

      We’re focusing on eliminating artificial barriers that prevent owners and developers from building infill they want to do, or that force them to have a fewer number of units than they’d like, or make the permitting so long and arduous that it wastes their time for no public benefit. In many areas like Ross’s Pinehurst people are building up to the zoning limit, and they’d build more if they were allowed to.

      There are some areas where developer interest has been lackluster, like southern MLK in Rainier Valley, or Federal Way downtown. That’s a secondary issue we can worry about later, once the artificial barriers are eliminated. And it may solve itself in ten or twenty years as the population increases and more desirable areas get built out so there aren’t as many other places for growth, so developers and would-be residents will give those areas another look.

      1. Mike, I see you are calling areas near light rail infill housing lacklusters when I see Lynnwood has plenty of infill housing. Lynnwood is just building too many housing units and what they should be doing is building homeless shelters and not arrays of apartments that won’t even draw people’s interests as long as it’s basically nothing. Light rail should be an infill housing connector.

      2. The problems of infill housing are much fewer than the problems of greenfield development, but American society has put much more effort into solving the problems associated with greenfield development than infill development.

        There’s one pesky issue though: that urban growth boundary.

      3. Mike Orr,

        It’s been a minute since I’ve I’ve done residential framing, but between my my brothers, nephew and my house painter niece, we could buy a house in Albuquerque and build a 750 sq ft ADU for less money than…. one 3 story elevator in Seattle. Think about that for a minute. The reason this “missing middle” doesn’t often get built or is high dollar when it does isn’t about removing barriers. It’s because building 6 or 4 units on a residential lot doesn’t pencil out unless the units are worth $800k each. Seattle’s batshit crazy zoning laws and permit structures make it impossible otherwise.

        Let’s say I could build a modest ADU on a lot with one existing lot, divide the lot into 2 tax parcels and sell them to separate buyers as separate single family homes. I’d be adding housing with much, much less construction waste . As a contractor I’d need something like $400k in cash and $800k in credit. The beauty of this is I could buy a house for 20% down and just use the maim house to store tools in, for an office or even live there while building the ADU. Because the ADU is an easy build with canned plans, it’s quick and easy.

        Paying cash for a million dollars house, then another over a 100 grand more to tear it down, pay to have new building designed from scratch and build 4 to 6 units on it…. it’s just too hard to make money or finance. Add a 100k for a bullshit elevator and many projects just die. These are the artificial barriers….

      4. It’s because building 6 or 4 units on a residential lot doesn’t pencil out unless the units are worth $800k each

        It is also illegal on the vast majority of lots in Seattle.

        Because the ADU is an easy build with canned plans, it’s quick and easy.

        You don’t get it. The reason they keep building ADUs is because it is the only thing they can build. For developers, a six unit building would be way more profitable than the typical house/ADU/DADU. Yet they keep building the latter because it is all that is legally allowed.

        Seattle’s batshit crazy zoning laws and permit structures make it impossible

        Now you are getting it.

      5. I didn’t call Lynnwood lackluster because several TOD buildings are going up around the station right now. But I fault Lynnwood for not improving its downtown twenty years earlier, and I wish the areas around the new buildings also had new buildings, and more retail because it looks like there won’t be much. There is Alderwood Mall nearby, but there should be more right in the station area, and all those one-story stores and surface parking lots in the Alderwood Mall area should be densified.

        Federal Way keeps talking about having a major downtown but I don’t see much movement. It’s still one mall and a bunch of one-story stores and strip malls and surface parking. However, I’ve heard in Federal Way’s case it’s largely due to lack of developer enthusiasm, so we’ll have to wait for that.

      6. “what [Lynnwood] should be doing is building homeless shelters”

        You can’t have a downtown with just homeless shelters. You need a balance of housing and shelters. Preferably with shelters intermixed here and there so that you don’t have thousands of beds concentrated on one block.

        “not arrays of apartments that won’t even draw people’s interests as long as it’s basically nothing”

        Don’t be ridiculous; of course the apartments around Lynnwood station will fill up. I haven’t heard that the apartments and houses around Ash Way P&R are having trouble finding residents, or the towers-in-the-park along the Bothell-Everett Highway.

        The downtown Lynnwood station area has Link, two Swift lines, a regional library, and nearby Edmonds College, Alderwood Mall, and Scriber Lake park. All that is highly attractive to tens of thousands of people. More than the Mountlake Terrace, Shoreline North, or Shoreline South station areas. And some people want to live in Snohomish County due to family, jobs, a less big-city environment and governments than King County. Many of those people don’t want to be a slave to a car while still living in Snohomish County. Downtown Lynnwood gives them that opportunity.

    3. The problem with infill housing is if it’s too expensive or hard to build, it just doesn’t get done.

      Yes, that is true of all housing, everywhere. The problem is zoning. To quote the paper I’ve quoted before:

      In much of America the price of housing is quite close to the marginal, physical costs of new construction. The price of housing is significantly higher than construction costs only in a limited number of areas. In those areas, we argue that high prices have little to do with conventional models with a free market for land. Instead, our evidence suggests that zoning and other land use controls play the dominant role in making housing expensive.

      Thus without zoning, the cost of housing would be roughly the same, everywhere. To be fair, labor and material costs might be a bit higher in one part of the country than another, but other than that, the cost of housing would be the same. I realize this is not intuitive. We think it has a lot to do with land prices. It doesn’t. The only reason it is so much more expensive to live in an apartment in Seattle rather than Kent is because of the regulations.

      Of course there are also places that have a surplus of housing. No one has any interest in building anything new. Those places are cheaper as well. But for most of the country, the cost of housing would be the same — if not for the zoning.

      I’m summarizing the study. It isn’t that hard to read.

      1. “We think it has a lot to do with land prices.”

        It’s both. The regulations are why the land prices are high, and the land prices are why the units are high. Creating scarcity by zoning causes more people to compete more desperately for each lot and unit, and that drives up prices.

      2. I think it’s helpful to view the price of land at an output, not an input, of the housing market at a macro/regional level. The value of the land should be the DCF, which is the delta between the “operating” cost of the building stock (depreciation of new construction cost + ongoing maintenance) and rent. In reality, much of the value of the land is assumed future growth in rents.

      1. Did Metro ever say it might be in March? Large restructures are usually in September. March is usually only touchups here and there. In any case, for a March restructure, the county would have had to approve it a few months ago. ST took Metro by surprise by opening Federal Way Link in December, and there wasn’t enough time to switch around bus routes by March.

    2. That’s great. The 168 is a standout route in South King and it should probably should get all-day 15 minute service whenever there are more service hours to go around. For reference, it’s about as productive as the F, 60, or C. The through-routed 161 is quite busy as well.

  10. I saw some random post in social media saying that the building code for a small multi-family residential is essentially the same as much larger commercial building and claimed that’s why it is so hard to develop that kind of housing. I guess elevator is just part of it.
    I’ve seen townhouses that is designed in a ridiculous way to achieve certain FAR that they should just have been developed as multi-family flat. Every unit is 3-4 story and has its own stairs is just not efficient use of space in densely zoned area. A 1600-sqft apartment unit feels much much more spacious than a 1600-sqft townhouse.

    1. This is somewhat true although the FAR requirements and such do cost more for bigger projects. The City governments tend to be well stocked with college educated types who like to deal with other college educated types so it leaves smaller builders at a disadvantage. Since the days of Mayor Norm Rice, the Seattle version of Sim City has always had big buildings in “urban villages”. It’s not an entirely bad idea. Seattle has added thousands of units of housing since Mayor Norm was around. The construction industry ran full tilt for decades, so the idea that Seattle could have done better needs to go away.

      I think the thing that’s tough for me to take is lack of real understanding by urbanist type people about what drives construction. It’s money. If you have the money to build your own house, or buy an existing house, you’re not going to buy something you hate. Or something you plan to abandon in 30 years. The rental market is a whole different ball game. The apartments are not the product, the poor tenants are. I had to laugh when City Council banned landlords from using software to manage vacancy numbers to manipulate rent prices. Who doesn’t want the biggest return on their money? And what’s keeping somebody in Florida from using software to fix rates in Seattle? And who would even know anyhow? I personally wouldn’t want Big Data and Big Corporate Money deciding how much my rent ought to be.

      I look at those big ugly apartment buildings as “tenant farms”

      1. “The construction industry ran full tilt for decades, so the idea that Seattle could have done better needs to go away. ”

        Don’t forget, they could have designed buildings differently with the same amount of labor if they’d been allowed to. That could have led to more units. Or more units on fewer lots. More multifamily and less McMansions and townhouses. That would have meant fewer lots to work on, saving labor hours for those additional units.

      2. “I had to laugh when City Council banned landlords from using software to manage vacancy numbers to manipulate rent prices. ”

        The issue wasn’t just “using software”. It was using a particular kind of software that allowed owners to de facto collude with other owners in price-fixing, which is an illegal monopolistic practice.

      3. During World War II several entire new cities were built in the northwest to house wartime workers. Vanport alone came to house some 40,000 people within a year of starting.

        So, the concept of “full tilt construction” deserves a bit of context.

      4. Mike Orr,

        “Don’t forget, they could have designed buildings differently with the same amount of labor if they’d been allowed to. That could have led to more units. Or more units on fewer lots. More multifamily and less McMansions and townhouses. That would have meant fewer lots to work on, saving labor hours for those additional units.”
        =======================================================
        This isn’t the old USSR. We don’t a have a “Ministry of Housing” in charge of what gets built and who get’s the live there. So no, “they” couldn’t have designed buildings differently. I’ve worked on so many McMansion sized products I thought were stupid, but the people who mattered, the people with the money… thought otherwise.

        The people with the money that control the housing renters live in…. they’re using software to track prices and vacancy rates to get the most out of their investments. One thing I learned about property management a long time ago… you don’t mess with the money. If you think property managers are the least bit afraid of Seattle City Council or even the Washington State government, you’d be wrong. Rent setting software is here to stay, because, once again, tenants are the product here, not the housing. When you rent, every time you get a raise, the landlord needs to bump up rent to make their profit margin.

        And the political reason for this is 2/3rds of American households own their own home and expect tax breaks for doing so. So renters are second class citizens in America. I personally think it’s deeply unfair, but I’m not in charge.

        In the history of the USA, there has never been a social or political movement that’s been successful that didn’t put home ownership near the top of it’s agenda. Until Leftie and Urbanists, (folks who have actual good ideas about most things!) get on the home owner bandwagon, they’ll continue to wander in desert except a few costal cities.

  11. Splitting the lines north of Mariner (a station name I find problematic, since it is nowhere near the baseball stadium) would not help with turning around trains in alternating sequence. The merge would be almost as messy as at IDC.

    In the meantime, turning around trains to get back in sequence at Lynnwood would involve trains being able to pass each other. It would involve having some trains headed south in the wrong direction until they get to the switch north of Mountlake Terrace.

    The supervisors who let operators know when they can proceed from Federal Way Downtown and Downtown Redmond will need to work out a timing algorithm between them, and test it. Unfortunately, that may mean not allowing passengers on board the southbound 2 Line trains from Lynnwood so the timing can be tested.

    ST has a good 26 days left to perform ACTUAL schedule simulation, and figure out how to make the timing work to keep train lines alternating at the IDC merge.

    1. Is the merge at ID messy? Seems straightforward to me.

      Also, not essential that lines perfectly alternate. I’ve ridden major systems elsewhere and sometimes the lines are out of sequence (i.e. one line shows up back-to-back) … given random delays across the network this is to be expected.

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