Take a look at the bike escalator which is helping cyclists to take their bikes up stairs giving them better access in heavily populated cities where bikes are the popular means of transportation.
The escalators are located in the metro stations at Tokyo and Kyoto and are very friendly to the environment; we hope it’s only a matter of time before we see this idea implemented to European cities.
The makers of the lifts say hilly cities can deter cyclists from using their bikes as often as they could, but the bike lift encourages more riding.
ThyssenKrupp has secured the contract to supply The Hanoi Landmark Tower in Vietnam with 41 high-speed elevators with a further 23 installations to follow. The high speed elevators will be equipped with regenerative drives and a destination selection control system to take passengers to any of the 70 floors at speeds of seven meters per second. As well as being used for offices the building will also contain a 5-star hotel with 383 rooms and suites, bars, restaurants and retail outlets.
The regenerative drives allow the elevators to convert energy produced when the cab brakes into electricity which is then feed back to the power supply. The system is extremely friendly to the environment and lowers energy use by approximately 30% when compared with standard elevator designs.
The elevators will also include ThyssenKrupp Elevator’s intelligent destination selection control system, the first time this feature has been used in Vietnam. Passengers will input the floor they wish to be taken to on an LCD screen outside the elevator and the system tells them which is the most appropriate elevator to take. ThyssenKrupp say the system will lower waiting times for passengers allowing them to get to their destination quicker.
Elevator and Escalator Company Schindler celebrated after the launch of two brand new cruise liners equipped with 76 Schindler elevators and escalators from the Genoa shipyard of Fincantieri.
The two cruise liners are the latest additions to the Costa Crociere fleet and were named Costa Pacifica and Costa Luminosa. Both ships are 290 meters long but the The Pacifica is the larger of the two ships, at 114,000 gross tonnage and has the capacity to hold 4,118 passengers and crew. Movement board the ships 14 decks is easy with 60 elevators to hand which includes three hydraulic platforms for disabled access.
“We are proud to have equipped these two new liners,” says Francesco Delton, the head of Schindler’s marine unit. “Schindler is now present on almost every Costa ship, thanks also to our preventative maintenance service.”
The Elevator Company Otis has secured two contracts to provide more than a thousand elevators for housing estates in Singapore. The contracts were awarded as part of a Lift Upgrading Program by the Singapore Housing and Development Board (HDB).
The work will require Otis to supply and install 1,300 elevators in public housing estates to replace existing elevators and improve accessibility.
Otis is the world biggest supplier of products such as elevators, escalators and moving walkways offering products and services in over 200 countries. Their HQ is based in the US at Farmington, Connecticut and employs 61,000 people.
Here is the hamster elevator designed to get to places no hamster has gone before. This hamster is particularly daring as he attempts to grab the hanging food despite the fact there is food already around the cage.
The device is triggers when the hamster enters the platform and is whisked up to the level of the food hanging on some string. You know it’s only a matter of time before hamsters actually have one of these in there cage.
The elevator is just an important culture symbol of the 20th century as the car and the aeroplane for the way they impact our daily lives for good and bad reasons. The elevator is an astounding mix of cutting edge design and mechanical audacity and provides both moments of relief and anger in equal amounts that no other device can.
Everyday equivalent to the earth’s entire population travels by some kind of lift and Britain has over 160,000 each of them being used 180 times a day, that’s a lot of stopping and starting. People make love in lifts, get married and even give birth in them, but this does not mean everyone loves lifts as suffers of Elevator phobia or EP will testify.
Elevator phobia or EP, as it is known in the US, is becoming a real problem, with one New York clinic treating 70 sufferers a week. In Britain, 4 per cent of the country’s population suffers from specific phobias, which includes EP. When in a lift or confined space sufferers get perceptions of losing control making themselves panic, in severe cases they lose control altogether.
One reported case was a woman so terrified of travelling in confined spaces that she wouldn’t even sit in the back of a car, let alone travel in a lift. By confronting her fears walking in and out of elevators and watching the doors open and close she was cured within four sessions.
This old comedy film clip comes from Candid Camera and highlights the influence people’s behaviour has on our own when we are forced into a tight space.
Watch as the subject in question tries so hard to keep his own individuality and avoid copying the other people in the elevator, but slowly the man finally succumbs to the pressure and turns the other way.
It’s amazing what people will do to fit in and it’s not just elevators where you can experiment with people behaviour patterns but they seem to be a place where people feel extremely uncomfortable. These reactions become especially strong when alone with a stranger in a lift.
Next time your in a lift with friends have a go at this experiment and see what happens.
There could be disabled people at home whose movement is decided by the wheelchair they use. If you live in a house that has stairs to reach the bedrooms, taking the wheel chair up and down could get too stressful for the person who is sitting in it as well as the person who is doing it regularly for them.
These people could find the chair lift a great blessing especially because they could operate this independently without having to bother anybody even if they are all by themselves at home. A wheelchair lift when chosen must be a quality one into which a lot of survey has gone before the buy. This could be a great gift for the people you love who can’t make it as easily as you do up and down the stairs.
A chair lift comes in a variety of features and of all these, the vertical chair lift that resembles the mechanism of an elevator is most convenient. Also enquire on how many pounds, the lift can hold at one go. This is important as you could avoid accidents that are caused because you end up buying lower capacity lift for your needs.
The inclined platform lift is another kind of convenience most commonly chosen for the disabled and both the varieties come in different models and capacities.
Always calculate the total weight including that of the wheel chair when going to purchase a chair lift. With this installed, you can get the fear out of your loved ones and give them the liberty to go all over the house independently with a feeling of self reliance and satisfaction. Could there be anything better than this to show your affection to your loved ones who have almost given up!
A ship repair company has been ordered to pay over £105,000 in fines and costs for safety breaches after a man was crushed to death.
The man aged 51, died at Falmouth Docks in August 2006. He was standing between a crane platform and the base of the crane when he was struck by the crane platform and killed.
The ship repair company admitted breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act and regulations for lifting equipment and was fined £85,000, and told to pay costs of over £20,000.
The crane platform at the site is suspended by chains from the crane so the man and other dock staff were assisting the crane operator to guide the platform toward the ship.
The incident occurred when the platform got jammed in the base of the crane and the man helped by his colleague tried to free the platform. Unfortunately the platform became loose and crushed him.
The Health and Safety Executive said: “The ship repair company pleaded guilty to failing to introduce a safe system of work, especially with regard to the provision of sufficient information, instruction, training and supervision for employees using lifting equipment.”
An elevator repair man was killed when the elevator he was repairing dropped down the shaft on top of him.
The incident occurred at a resort at West Palm Beach. The 39 year old man was killed when the elevator he was working suddenly dropped on to him and it appears the elevator should not have been operating at all.
It seems there have been over 10 issues sighted with the elevators at the resort of not having its safety certificate updated.
