Vertical transportation
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Vertical Transportation in Tall Buildings
Dr Gina Barney,
Gina Barney Associates, PO Box 7, Sedbergh, LA10 5GE.
natcon.pap
Abstract
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Part 1 of this paper reviews how lift service is provided in buildings from low rise to mega high
buildings. Examples are briefly described. Having transported passengers to their destination
floors, Part 2 discusses how lifts behave and are used during a fire and for an evacuation during
an emergency. The final part debates whether buildings need be so tall and why lifts need to be
so fast.
1 TALL BUILDINGS
1.1 Definitions
A low rise building might be described as one where the able bodied do not need a lift to reach
their floor, but if one is available they invariably use it. This would imply a building of 3-5
floors. A mid rise building is one where there may be 8-10 floors and the lift becomes essential,
in order for occupants to use the building. A high rise building might be one which contains 1516 floors and maybe equipped with lifts serving two zones. Low, mid and high rise buildings
describe the majority of the building stock of the UK.
Tall buildings might be defined as those buildings over 30/40 stories high. This height can
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be related to nature, as the tallest tree ever measured was 132.6 m. Generally, if service can be
provided from the access level (main terminal floor) to every floor in the building, this is a tall
building.
A building could be called very tall, once shuttle lifts serving sky lobbies are required.
Fortune (1997) defines a tall building as a `skyscraper', ie: A high rise building with more than
one zone of elevators. and a very tall building as a `Mega High Rise building', ie: A building
with one or more sky lobbies and in excess of 75 floors..
As a general rule, about 60 floors can be served from a main terminal lobby at ground level,
by up to four groups of lifts (a practical limit). If double deck lifts are used, this permits up to 80
floors to be served from a main terminal lobby. Buildings with more than 80 floors require sky
lobbies with shuttle lifts to serve them. This permits buildings of 120/160 floors with one sky
lobby and buildings of 180/240 floors with two sky lobbies with single/double deck lifts.
Remember the maximum practical number of lifts that can be grouped together is eight cars with
four facing four.
The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat survey of the 100 tallest buildings in 1999
(reported in Elevator World, 1999) indicated 63 were in North America, 30 around the rest of
the Pacific Rim, four in Europe (one in London) and three others. The heights of the top 50
ranged from 260-450 m, a 190 m range, whilst the bottom 50 ranged from 230-260 m, a 30 m
range. There must be hundreds of buildings between 130 m (the highest tree) and 230 m.
A printed copy of this paper can be obtained by sending your business card and a stamped, addressed, A4 sized,
envelope to PO Box 7, Sedbergh, LA10 5GE.
2
Eucalyptus Regnans, Watts River, Victoria, Australia in 1872 was 132.6 m high [Guiness Book of records].
Page 2 of 12 pages
CIBSE National Technical Conference, 18 June 2002
Very tall buildings sometimes described as `monumental' buildings are few in number
compared to the totality of buildings world wide and their traffic design requires expert
consideration. The traffic design of such buildings employs many techniques such as stacked
zones, shuttle lifts and sky lobbies, transfer floors, double deck lifts and top/down service.
1.2 Zoning
In modern high rise buildings each lift is not usually required to service every level, as this
would imply a large number of stops during each trip. The effect is to increase the round trip
time, which in turn increases the interval and the passenger waiting time and the passengers
have to endure long journey times.
The solution is to limit the number of floors served by the lifts. A rule of thumb is to serve a
maximum of 15-16 floors with a lift, or a group of lifts. This introduces the concept of zoning.
Zoning is where a building is divided so that a lift or group of lifts is constrained to only serve a
designated set of floors. There are two forms of zoning: interleaved and stacked.
An interleaved zone is where the whole building is served by lifts, which are arranged to
serve either the even floors or the odd floors. This has been a common practice in public
housing and has been used in some office buildings. So for example in a 16 floor residential
building one lift may serve: G,1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15, whilst another lift serves:
G,2,4,6,8,10,12,14,16.
The effect is to reduce the number of stops a lift makes because there are fewer floors to be
served. This also reduces the capital costs because there are fewer openings and landing doors
to install. The service to passengers, however, is poorer than with a duplex serving all floors,
because there is only one lift to take them to their floor. Tenants tend to solve this by calling
both cars at the main terminal and if it is the `wrong' one, walking a flight of stairs to their floor
(if they are able). Thus cars are unnecessarily brought to the main terminal. Interleaved zoning
is not recommended (a)... proven disaster in the US. (Strakosch, 1988).
A stacked zone building is where a tall building is divided into horizontal layers, in effect,
stacking several buildings on top of each other, with a common `footprint' in order to save
ground space. It is a recommended practice for office and institutional buildings.
Each zone can be treated differently with regard to shared or separate lobby arrangements,
grade of service, etc. The floors served are usually adjacent, although some buildings may have
split subzones, where the occupants of each subzone are associated with each other and can be
expected to generate some interfloor movements. The number of floors in a zone, the number of
lifts serving a zone and the length of the express jump all affect the service times.
1.3 Shuttle Lifts (with sky lobbies)
Many tall buildings are divided into several zones: low zone, mid zone, high zone, etc. with
service direct from the main terminal floor, situated at ground level. These are called `local'
zones. This becomes impractical with very tall buildings and shuttle lifts are employed to take
passengers from the ground level main lobby to a `sky lobby'. This could be 200 m (Petronas
Towers, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia).
Passengers disembark at the sky lobby and service is then provided to further low, mid, high
zones, etc. using the sky lobby as an upper main terminal floor. The advantage is that the core
efficiency is improved, as the hoistways extend the whole height of the building (except for the
intervening equipment spaces) and occupy the same hoistway `footprint'. Shuttle lifts are
usually quite large and fast and provide an excellent service to the sky lobby. Their main
disadvantage is that the passengers must change lifts mid journey, hence increasing their total
journey time. When a traffic design involves a change of lift, the two journey times are best
quoted separately. Sometimes passengers travel down from the sky lobby as well as up
(Fortune, 1986). Most shuttle lifts are single deck, but there are a number of double deck
Vertical transportation
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installations.
Schroeder (1989a) defines four basic sky lobby configurations:
1. Single deck shuttles, single deck locals, eg: World Trade Center, USA.
2. Double deck shuttles, single deck locals, eg: Sears Tower, USA.
3. Double deck shuttles, double deck locals, eg: Petronas Towers, Malaysia.
4. Single deck shuttles, single deck top/down locals, eg: none.
Configuration 4 would be difficult to engineer, as offset lobbies would be required.
configuration Schroeder did not consider should be added:
5. Double deck shuttles, single deck top/down locals, eg: UOB Plaza, Singapore.
Generally shuttle lifts serve between two stops only, hence the term `shuttle', but sometimes
they serve three stops, ie: with two sky lobbies (Sears Tower, USA).
The number of shuttle lifts that are installed world wide is not large. Their traffic design is
relatively simple, but their application in a building requires expert consideration.
1.4 Double Decker Lifts
Double deck lifts comprise two passenger cars one above the other connected to one
suspension/drive system. The upper and lower decks can thus serve two adjacent floors
simultaneously. During peak periods the decks are arranged to serve `even' and `odd' floors
respectively with passengers guided into the appropriate deck for their destination. Special
arrangements are made at the lobby for passengers to walk up/down a half flight of
stairs/escalators to reach the lower or upper main lobby.
Double deck lifts, which are common in the USA and elsewhere, but unusual in Europe, are
used in very tall buildings. Fortune (1996) indicated 465 double deck lifts in 34 buildings across
the world (see Table 1).
Table 1 World wide location of double deck lifts
Location
Number
Buildings
N. America
317
17
Singapore
55
5
Malaysia
29
1
Japan
17
3
Spain
15
3
Taiwan
12
1
Australia
11
1
England
4
1
Hong Kong
4
1
China
1
1
Total
465
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There are many advantages and disadvantages to double deck operation and special care has
to be taken with the lobby arrangements. One advantage for double deck lifts is that the
`hoistway' handling capacity is improved, as effectively there are two lifts in each shaft. A
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CIBSE National Technical Conference, 18 June 2002
disadvantage for passengers during off peak periods is when one deck may stop for a call with
no coincident landing, or car call, required in the other deck. Special traffic control systems,
available during off peak periods, attempt to overcome this problem.
Fortune (1996) expounds the advantages of double deck installations as:
1. Fewer lifts
2. Smaller car sizes
3. Lower rated speeds
4. Fewer stops
5. Increased zone size
6. Quicker passenger transit times
7. 30% less core space
8. Taller buildings on same footprint
9. Smaller lobbies
10. Fewer entrances
11. Faster installation
12. Reduced maintenance costs
and the disadvantages as:
1. One significant supplier
2. Passenger misuse
3. Zone populations must be large
4. Balanced demand from even and odd floors
5. Interfloor distance must be regular
6. Slightly larger hoistways
7. Increased pit and machine room loadings
8. Lobby exits need to be larger
9. Special facilities for disabled access to other floor
1.5 Transfer Floors
Most tall and very tall buildings provide some means to travel between zones and stacks. This is
sometimes achieved by overlapping zones (Petronas Towers), introducing extra stops (Sears
Tower) or shuttle lifts (World Trade Center). A common served floor (other than the Main
Terminal or Sky Lobby) is important, where there are common facilities to be accessed, eg:
restaurant, travel bureau, banking, sports facilities, post room, reprographics, etc.
The effect on traffic handling can be disruptive. In general it is important to restrict access to
such floors during uppeak and down peak, although the purpose of such a floor would be
defeated at other times, ie: at the mid day break or during interfloor traffic.
1.6 Top/Down Service
A top/down lift installation is where a sky lobby is used to serve building zones or stacks both in
the conventional up direction, but also in the down direction. This does mean that passengers
may (psychologically) be concerned that they have travelled up a building only to be th
Vertical transportation
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