3 ms·

Who wants an escalator in an office building with more than two floors? They are literally designed to make it take longer to reach your destination than an ele

Who wants an escalator in an office building with more than two floors? They are literally designed to make it take longer to reach your destination than an elevator.

jrockway 7y ago
I worked at Google NYC for 6 years. It's a 16 story building that was designed to be a freight transfer terminal. The elevators were very very slow. It was often significantly faster to walk up 10 flights of stairs than to wait. I would have killed for an escalator. (In all fairness to the facilities team, they built new banks of elevators on a very regular basis. Still slow, depending on which floor you wanted to go to. But I'm sure it's much better now.)
- walrus01 7y ago
  You're talking about 111 8th?
- hammock 7y ago
  SimTower with the critical insight... people will prefer escalators to elevators when they are going 5 or less floors.
slang800 7y ago
It's a tradeoff between latency and throughput... Also, there are some small advantages for people who are claustrophobic, and in cases when the power goes down.
greglindahl 7y ago
Tons of hotels have escalators serving the bottom floors (meeting rooms, restaurants) combined with elevators (guest rooms). In tall office buildings with many tenants, it's not that unusual for companies with multiple adjacent floors to have stairs or escalators, in order to avoid waiting for an elevator.
- hermitdev 7y ago
  I worked in the Sears Tower for a few years. Coming in from the west side of the building, had to walk down a flight of stairs, take an elevator up around a few dozen floors, transfer up a floor via an escalator to get the next elevator to get to get to my final floor at about 40 floors. It was about 10 minutes from entering the building until I got to my desk sometimes. Stairs were not an option because you could only exit at ground floor. Previous job, we had elevators straight to most our floors, we occupied the upper floors of a 37 floor building. We also had a few around floor 10, to get to those, one had to go all the way to gound floor and then back up. Within a block, stairs were an option and id generally use the stairs for up to 3 floors.
mehrdadn 7y ago
You must've never seen slow elevators!
mprev 7y ago
> They are literally designed to make it take longer to reach your destination than an elevator. What makes you say that? An escalator is about delivering a constant flow of people between two fixed floors. An elevator delivers bursts of people between a choice of floors. Which one is faster depends on availability and the journey you want to make.

Who wants an escalator in an office building with more than two floors? They are literally designed to make it take longer to reach your destination than an elevator.

jrockway 7y ago

I worked at Google NYC for 6 years. It's a 16 story building that was designed to be a freight transfer terminal. The elevators were very very slow. It was often significantly faster to walk up 10 flights of stairs than to wait. I would have killed for an escalator. (In all fairness to the facilities team, they built new banks of elevators on a very regular basis. Still slow, depending on which floor you wanted to go to. But I'm sure it's much better now.)

walrus01 7y ago
You're talking about 111 8th?
hammock 7y ago
SimTower with the critical insight... people will prefer escalators to elevators when they are going 5 or less floors.

slang800 7y ago

It's a tradeoff between latency and throughput... Also, there are some small advantages for people who are claustrophobic, and in cases when the power goes down.

greglindahl 7y ago

Tons of hotels have escalators serving the bottom floors (meeting rooms, restaurants) combined with elevators (guest rooms). In tall office buildings with many tenants, it's not that unusual for companies with multiple adjacent floors to have stairs or escalators, in order to avoid waiting for an elevator.

hermitdev 7y ago
I worked in the Sears Tower for a few years. Coming in from the west side of the building, had to walk down a flight of stairs, take an elevator up around a few dozen floors, transfer up a floor via an escalator to get the next elevator to get to get to my final floor at about 40 floors. It was about 10 minutes from entering the building until I got to my desk sometimes. Stairs were not an option because you could only exit at ground floor. Previous job, we had elevators straight to most our floors, we occupied the upper floors of a 37 floor building. We also had a few around floor 10, to get to those, one had to go all the way to gound floor and then back up. Within a block, stairs were an option and id generally use the stairs for up to 3 floors.

mehrdadn 7y ago

You must've never seen slow elevators!

mprev 7y ago

> They are literally designed to make it take longer to reach your destination than an elevator. What makes you say that? An escalator is about delivering a constant flow of people between two fixed floors. An elevator delivers bursts of people between a choice of floors. Which one is faster depends on availability and the journey you want to make.