VERTICAL TRAFFIC

Greymouth Evening Star, 11 May 1936, Page 9

VERTICAL TRAFFIC

VITAL IN NEW YORK.

Tho extent to which New York City’s normal life hangs upon the comparatively slender elevator cable was vividly demonstrated recently, writes Victor Bernstein in the “New York Times.” The city’s vertical transportation system carries more passengers daily than all its other transit facilities combined. It represents one-quarter of all the elevators in the United' States, and more than half the number of the whole of Europe.

Every day the city’s 41,649 elevators carry about 15,000,000 passengers. In the same period, subway and elevated railway lines carry 5,200,000 passengers, buses 1,000,000, and surface cars 1,800,000 persons. Vertical traffic thus is nearly double that of horizontal traffic.

The city’e elevators produce enough mileage-—11)0,1)00 miles a day—to circle the earth every six hours, or to reach the mon in less than two and a-half days. They operate in shafts whose combined length would reach 1300 miles from New York to beyond Miami (air line distance). It is estimated that at least half of the city’s millions use elevators in their homes, for business, or for visiting, every day.

Manhattan, tallest community in the world, contains 75 per cent, of the city’s total. The distribution is: — Passenger. Freight.

New York is almost invariably thought of as a city of towers. It. isn’t really. Nearly 70 per cent, of its 6.50,000 buildings are one and two family dwellings. Throughout the city the average building height is probably less than five storeys. Yet, when its vertical transportation system is even partially paralysed, it is the towers that count. The financial and industrial power of the city is largely concentrated in elevator buildings. Despite their small numerical percentage, these structures represent nearly half the total building value in the city. They house a good proportion of the city’s gainful workers. Thus architectural genius, having thrust the city skyward to give it 'com, also exposed its inhabitants to the danger of being marooned on high. But a significant development revealed in the last few years, is tending to lessen this danger. Of the 950 passenger elevators in Queens, SOO are of the automatic type that require no operators. In the Bronx nearly 60 per cent, are automatic. Manhattan, with 11,000 automatic elevators, depends primarily upon operators. It will probably continue to do so for years to come, for the modern automatic elevator is designed primarily for private residences or small apartment houses; it is not suited to skyscrapers. The elevator started its conquest of New York about eighty years ago, when Elisha James Otis stood on a wooden platform, had himself hoisted some twenty-five feet by a panting steam engine, and, before an awestruck throng at the Crystal Palace Exposition, slashed the rope from which the elevator was suspended. The contraption did not fall; Mr Otis’s safety device gave the invention all the impetus it needed for widespread adoption. HYDRAULIC LIFTS. The steam-powered lift of the I Eighteen Fifties was generally dis-

placed by the hydraulic type during the Eighteen Seventies. In 1898 the first electric lift was put into operation, but it was twenty-dive years before electricity displaced the hydraulic power to any great extent. There .are still nearly a thousand hydraulic "elevators in downtown Manhattan; their mechanism goes as far down into the earth as they go up in the air, for they are operated by a plunger built precisely as long as the shaft. The elevator division of Manhattan's Building Department also lists a lew steam-driven elevators, which probably will remain until the buildings are torn down.

Tho longest-climbing, the largest, and the fastest elevators in the world are located in Manhattan. A freight elevator in the Empire State Building rises 986 feet from the sub-basement to the eighty-sixth floor. An elevator in Rockefeller Centre climbs 1400 feet a minute —about sixteen miles an hour. An elevator in the Port Authority Building lifts four loaded trucks —about twenty tons—as easily as the early steam type lilted its operator ami one or two passengers—and much more rapidly and quietly. The modern electric elevator, even though manned by an operator, is in reality an automaton of amazing complexity and versatility. The operator does little but open and close the doors. Passengers, pushing buttons on the various floors, leave their mark on the “electric lirain” of the vehicle, and it stops automatically on the proper floors. The operator pushes buttons to let them off.

In some department stores elevators are regulated to stop automatically, and to open their doors, at each floor. In at least one skyscraper down town, where space for shafts is at a premium, a “double-decker” elevator is in operalion. One car serves the oddnumbered floors, while the other serves the even.

Impressive as it is, the elevator system in New York meets only part of the vertical transportation needs of the greatest up-and-down city in the world. Several hundred thousand dtpib waiters are in operation, lowering hundreds of tons of garbage and raising tons Of merchandise daily. There, are nearly 200 escalators in the city, and their number is growing.

Manhattan . . 20,680 10,720 Brooklyn 2.561 3,330 Bronx 1,675 661 Queens 950 850 Richmond 61 161 Totals . 25,927 15,722