RUSH HOURS

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 129, 4 June 1927, Page 5

RUSH HOURS

ELEVATOR TRAFFIC JAMS

HOW NEW YORK DEALS WITH

THE PROBLEM

Multiplying crowds and increasing building heights have created for the elevators of New York a traffic problem for the solution of which almost as many schemes are being presented as for the handling of vat.w ffl'° UgS aud autom°Wie jams. Elevatoi traffic management in business buildings has long since ceased to depend on chance, states the "New York Times," On graph sheets the movements o£ the people in the buildmg at different hours are plotted so that schedules may be arranged to nt the curves.

One Manhattan building has seven different schedules of elevator operation during the day, with skip-stop systems in use on down-going cars during the morning rush hour and on the up-going cars during the evening rush hour—likewise when workers are going out and coming in at lunch tune. The same building has anticipated one of the latest plans for subway relief in its installation of a stagger system. Half the employees are due to arrive at 5.45 o'clock in the morning and the other half at i) o'clock, and the evening rush hour is broken by the same interval.

Use of elevators in big buildings necessitates, on the passenger's part, considerable vigilance. If he steps into the first ear he sees, he is likely to find, that he must start all over again before he can reach his destination. This bank of carß, it may be, stops only between the tenth and twenty-fourth floors; that bank only from the twenty-fourth to the thirty-sixth; another executes express service to the roof. This ear will take him down all the way to the ground, but to no other floor; that one will take him part of the way, but not all the way. He must be guided by numerous signs, some of which change from day to day and from hour.to hour.

The recent tendency in elevator buildings has been toward automatic control. The electric go signal in many buildings lias reduced the starter to the role of a figurehead and in others has abolished him entirely. In some elevator systems the operator pushes a button registering the floor the passenger calls out as he enters. and the elevator does the rest. The ear moves to the floor indicated, stops level with it through a micro-levelling apparatus, and the doors, operated by compressed air, open automatically.

"■\Vatch your step" is heard less and less in and around ulevatoi'B, as the cays cease to stagger under manual control, coming to a stop several inches out of line with the floor. Semi-automatic .control is being installed in a new building on Broad street. The operator registers the floor called for on his control board, and when he comes within the zone a light flashes, at which sigual he throws his lever out of control and from then on the stopping is automatic.

The elevator traffic in one of lower Broadway's biggest office buildings is managed by a synchronising clock, by means of which the cars in the different shafts are kept the same distance apart, so that their arrival on the ground floor will be properly timed for their departure upward 1 at thirty-second intervals. A white light in the car notifies the operator when he should be startiug up from the ground floor and a red light tells him when it is time for him to start down from the top floor. Midway a green light indicates that he should be at a given floor. These lights warn him either to speed up or to go more slowly. Thejstarter keeps watch on the cars by means'of their dials and with his panel board'can signal to the operators any special orders to meet emergencies on the ground floor.

Another tall building has put in the dispatcher system. The dispatcher sits out of sight in an office before a board, on which each elevator shaft is represented by a vertical row of light bulbs. The position of each elevator is indicated by the light. This dispatcher keeps constant ■watch on the cars and directs their movements. He can flash directions to a -waiting passenger, lighting np various electric signs on different floors to tell him when a given car is not fn service or will not

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