Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city is to be supplied with 339 escalators and elevators for their newly developing major subway system by Schindler. The 22km Kadikoy-Kartal line would provide an important travel system for the Asian half of the city that is highly populated.

Booked last year, this contract covers 272 escalators and 67 elevators that are to be installed in the 16 stations along the Kadikoy-Kartal line. These installations are expected to be completed by the end of 2010, after which the system is to be handed over to the city officials at the end of March 2011.

The lengths of these escalators range between three and twenty meters and are constructed with special features and materials like stainless steel landing platforms and balustrades that protect the structures from the elements. While most of the doors are installed with glass balustrades, some of them have steel on one side and glass on the other side.

This new metro line would provide a transport system for their mostly populated region, namely the Asian half of the city. It would make their commute safe, clean, effective and with less delay. This line would also serve as a connection to the European side of the city, where most of the jobs are situated.

The Turkey General Manager at Schindler, Mete Zadil is pleased and honored to work with contractor Avrasya Metro Grubu on this massive transportation assignment. He believes that the Kadikoy-Kartal subway line would aid and enhance mobility and help the people gain access to occupations and services located at the other side of the Bosphorus strait.

Istanbul accounts for 27% of national GDP and has a population of 13 million. The new line being constructed is part of a major expansion project that aims to reduce congestion within Istanbul and improve their transport system. In the past, Schindler has supplied escalators for the main airport in Istanbul and for stations at another metro line that runs under the Bosphorus.

With their headquarters in Switzerland, the Schindler Group is regarded as the leading global mobility provider. Present in more than 140 countries, this company specializes in the design, manufacture, installation, service and modernization of elevator and escalator systems for almost all types of buildings. They support the sustainable urban development by providing safe, reliable and ecologically friendly mobility solutions.

Broward County prosecutors have dropped all charges against a Sunrise Florida man after reviewing an elevator surveillance tape.

22 year old Joshua Daniel Ortiz was charged with felony battery on a law enforcement officer.

The incident started when Ortiz and a group of friends were getting into an elevator at 200 SW First Ave. They were heading to a parking garage after a night out when acquaintances of Ortiz’s began fighting in the lobby.

Police were called to the scene to break up the fight.

The police claim that upon arriving, Ortiz began yelling at the officers from the elevator. Officer Dereck Lade, of the Fort Lauderdale police department, said in his official report that Ortiz walked up and stood nose to nose with him. Lade said that he shoved Ortiz back, and made an attempt to take Ortiz into custody.

Lade stated that as he tried to take Ortiz into custody, Ortiz assumed a fighting stance, with both fists clenched, and his body bladed.

Ortiz ended up with a broken nose during the arrest.

The event caused many inconveniences for Ortiz. Ortiz said, “They were just sitting there watching my life go down the drain with those charges. I’ve been going crazy thinking my life is over.” The incident delayed Ortiz’s enrollment in college.

That all changed when prosecutors reviewed the tape. The surveillance footage showed 3 officers, Derek Lade, Stefan Silver, and Steve Smith, aggressively rush and beat Ortiz. The charge of felony battery was then downgraded to a misdemeanor resisting arrest charge.

Prosecutors again reviewed the tape, and dropped all charges.

Sgt. Frank Sousa, the department’s spokesperson, insisted that it was not a beat down, and said that the Fort Lauderdale Internal Affairs investigators found nothing wrong in the video, noting that no policy or procedural violations were found .

Sousa also said that the video clearly showed Ortiz making a movement toward the officers.

Ortiz said that the claims made against him by the officers were completely false, and that they were simply on a power trip.

Stephen Melnick, Ortiz’s defense attorney, said that the officers lied in their reports to justify their actions, unaware that the entire incident was being taped.

This is a tale about an encounter I had while on holiday recently. While I was relaxing at a bar, I made the acquaintance of a really cute blonde. We hit it off – when she found out that I was from Manchester, she went crazy. She loved Mancunians. We spent a couple of hours chatting and drinking, and had a really great time. When it was time to leave, I managed to convince her to walk with me – my hotel was pretty close to the bar. Turns out that stoplights are a great place to sneak a few kisses. My blonde cutie agreed.

By the time we got to the hotel, we were on fire from all the passionate kissing. We stumbled towards the elevator. This particular elevator had a clear glass back to it and you could see the entire interior of the hotel through it. The room I was staying in was on the third floor, so I pressed “3.”

When the elevator doors closed, I put my hand behind her neck, tugged at her hair and pulled her as close as possible. We started kissing again, and these kisses put all those previous kisses to shame. All of a sudden, right when it started getting really intense, the elevator pinged. We had reached the third floor, but since we were having such a good time, I hit the elevator button for floor ‘19’ – the highest floor in the hotel.

We lost ourselves in each other as the elevator chugged steadily upwards. Not only did we lose ourselves, but also we lost our ability to notice anything outside of our little kissing circle. Without our noticing, the elevator had gone up all the way to the 19th floor and back down to the lobby.

She put her leg around me and went for my neck. I leaned back to give her better access, opened my eyes a little and looked through the glass wall of the elevator. In front of us there was a security guard and three people staring at us. I started laughing, causing the blonde to cease her assault on my neck and look through the glass wall. She started laughing as well, along with the three people. However, the security guard was annoyed.

I hit the ‘3’ button and the elevator took off with us still laughing. This time, we went straight to the room. What a spectacular and hilarious night!

On the long list of common phobias that people fear the most, claustrophobia is in the top five. For many people, even just the thought of being confined in a small space is enough to cause them to break out into a sweat and make their heart race.

This is why the ordeal Nicholas White experienced is all the more horrifying.

White worked in the McGraw Hill Building in downtown Manhattan late Friday night to meet a deadline for the publisher, he decided to step away from his desk and take a smoking break. He went outside and had a few relaxing moments, and felt rejuvenated and energized enough to get back to work. However, on the elevator trip back up to his office at the 43rd level, the elevator stopped inexplicably at the 13th floor.

Frantically, White tried every emergency button and alarm switch, to no avail. His panicked attempts were visible on the security cameras, but for some reason, no one noticed for 41 hours, until White was released Sunday.

Understandably, White was rather traumatized by his ordeal. Confined alone in such a small space, without food or water, completely deprived of any sensory stimulation, is one of the most harrowing experiences a person can experience. White has been unable to work since the event, due to his ruined mindset from the stress of the event. Some doctors believe that White has post traumatic stress disorder from the incident.

Elevators are of course common place; it would be difficult to find an office building without one. Most people do not think twice about walking into an elevator. Yet elevator-related incidents, injuries, and deaths do occur. For instance, Dr. Hitoshi Nikaidoh entered an elevator in a Houston-area hospital in 2003; as he was walking into the elevator, the doors shut around him, and instead of releasing when they touched his body, the elevator started to raise while Nikaidoh struggled to escape. He was gruesomely killed in the accident, right in front of the other person in the elevator.

In a single year, elevators and escalators kill about 30 people and injure over 17,000. Current mandates do not demand inspections or approvals at the federal level, and instead leave it up to the states’ rulings.

Everyone is reading this long and fascinating story about elevators. I enjoyed the passage on elevator etiquette Instinctively, people know how to conduct themselves when boarding an elevator. A pair of strangers gravitate to the rear corners, another stands by the door, until the fourth arrives. Then these last two cover the front corners, opening the center for the fifth and whoever follows. As more arrive, they all re-position into open space.

The goal is to block potential intimacy and strive for maximum distance. A familiar code of subway riding and urinal sharing. Looking ahead is a must, with a slight vertical motion perhaps. Mirrors amplify the feeling of awkwardness.
Silence is customary, although generic small talk and neighborly greetings are reluctantly allowed.

Reminds me of two things.

1. People facing backward in The Great Candid Camera Stunt (and those not in
the stunt following their cue, like sheep)

2.This marvelous anecdote about Alfred Hitchcock:

Of Hitchcock, my favorite memory is an incident in New York, at the St.Regis Hotel in 1964. With Hitch red-faced and cheerful, and I a bit tipsy after some frozen daiquiris, we boarded the elevator on the 25th floor, riding in silence until the 19th, whereupon three evening-attired folks entered. Suddenly, he faces me and says, “Well, it was quite shocking, I must say there was blood everywhere!” Confused, I thought because of the many daiquiris that something was amiss, but he continued his tale: “There was a stream of blood coming from his ear and another from his mouth.” Certainly, all had recognized him but nobody would look. Two more arrived as he went on: “Of course, there was a huge pool of blood on the floor and his clothes were splattered with it. Oh! It was a horrible mess. Well, you can imagine…”It was apparent that everyone had stopped breathing, including myself. Now he glanced at me, I made a silly nod, and he again continued: “Blood all around! Well, I looked at the poor fellow and I said, Good God, man, what’s happened to you?” Just then, as the elevator doors opened to the lobby, Hitchcock said “And do you know what he told me?” and paused. Reluctantly, the amazed passengers departed the elevator, anxiously staring at the director while passing in silence. After foggy moments passed, I asked, “So what did he say?” Hitch put on a beatific smile and said,  “Oh nothing–that’s just my elevator story.”

The trouble may begin when the lift doors first separate to open. There is a tightness that wells up in the chest. Fear and anxiety flood in, and the heart beats at an accelerated pace the closer one walks to the elevator. Excessive sweating commences and irrational fears may set in long before the lift doors snap closed. The idea of being trapped inside the walls of the lift becomes very real. For a person suffering the debilitating effects of elevator phobia, this scenario is a common reaction felt keenly each time a lift is within sight.

For those who suffer with the fear of lifts, life can become very difficult. Especially for those who live in a larger city, elevator phobia may become an almost daily companion. The panic attack symptoms lay just below the surface, ready to come forward in the most ordinary circumstances of life. A trip to the doctor’s surgery or any other office building may quickly become a fight for sanity and composure. Avoiding lifts altogether may work for a while, but can make it very difficult to function normally. Running into an elevator is a very common part of normal adult life. A profound elevator phobia creates difficult social and work situations, often compounding the sufferer’s anxiety all the more.

Fortunately, there are several therapies that have proven effective in the treatment of elevator phobia. Elevator phobia is very often a conditioned fear, and learning to overcome the anxious response is quite possible.

Desensitization techniques work very well as well, but take a great deal of time to prove effective. Hypnotic therapy can provide relief for sufferers. Hypnotherapy quickly removes the automatic, unpleasant response surrounding experience with lifts and replaces it with a more pleasant reaction. Neuro-linguistic programming, or NLP, works very well in combination with hypnosis. Seeking treatment for elevator phobia is the first step to living a life free of this paralyzing fear.

Hydraulic lifts and cable systems are of the most basic technologies being put to use in urban transport systems. Both systems are a century in the works, and they have long been an industry standard for both passenger lifts and freight elevators, as they generate a great amount of force by manipulating rather weak pumps and pulleys. However, the drawbacks of these systems have been chronicled and widely accepted, and buildings designs looking for an optimum efficiency and aesthetic from their lift systems are rethinking the use of the simplistic designs.

All aspects of elevator design and production are being reconfigured. Advanced lift systems incorporate greater speed, braking control and efficiency, making for a faster, more comfortable ride while using less energy, reducing the carbon footprint of the building.

Many of today’s elevator systems make use of newer technology that eliminates the need for a large machine room by placing the lift’s motor either in a small cabinet or directly inside the elevator shaft. Additionally, destination-oriented systems increase the comfort and efficiency of passenger lifts: Instead of simple up and down buttons, the passenger selects their floor, and the designated elevator car appears to deliver the passenger to their destination in the quickest, most efficient manner possible.

With new technology comes new codes, and performance-based lift codes are being written to allow for these advancements in lift design to blossom. Without rewriting the intact code, the newly written performance-based code demands the same objectives without the old specifications. Safety, of course, is the primary concern, but without specific size and material requirements, lift designers have greater creative freedom designing the safest elevator possible.

The advancements we may see with an across the board acceptance of performance-based codes are already beginning to emerge: Mitsubishi has designed passenger lifts capable of a maximum speed of 540 meters per second, while Kone’s EcoDisk lift system places the motor inside the shaft, eliminating the machine room altogether and providing twice the efficiency of hydraulic lift systems. In the future, we may even see NASA assemble an elevator capable of propulsion to outer space.

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.