The Vertical Traffic Jam – Why Elevators Are the Highways of Your Building

Imagine you’re driving into the city on a crisp Monday morning. The skyline glows in the distance, your favourite podcast is playing, and you’re making great time—until the freeway narrows. Suddenly, you’re crawling. The road, built decades ago, wasn’t designed for this volume of traffic. There aren’t enough lanes. You’re boxed in, inching forward, watching the minutes tick by. Frustration builds. You’re late. Again.

Now, take that same feeling and place it inside a building.

You walk into a gleaming office tower—glass, steel and prestige. But as you approach the elevator lobby, the illusion cracks. A crowd has formed. People are checking their watches, sighing, pacing. The elevators arrive full. You wait. And wait. The frustration is familiar. It’s the same helplessness you feel in traffic—only now, it’s vertical.

This is the hidden traffic jam of modern buildings. And it’s more common than you think.

Many buildings are designed with just enough elevators to meet projected demand—on paper. But real life doesn’t follow spreadsheets. One elevator goes down for maintenance. Another is out for repairs. Suddenly, the system is overwhelmed. Just like a highway with no shoulder, one small disruption causes a ripple effect. Queues grow. Tempers flare. The building’s reputation begins to erode.

And people talk.

They talk to coworkers. They post on social media. They vent to friends and clients. What began as a minor inconvenience becomes a reputational issue. Tenants question the value of the space. Lease negotiations become tense. Rent expectations shift. In some cases, disputes arise, or worse; the lease renewal becomes a termination – and “Premium Grade tenants” start to leave your Premium Grade building.

Now imagine a mixed-use development—offices, retail, residential, maybe even a hotel. Each group has different peak times, different needs. Office workers flood in between 8 and 9. Shoppers trickle in throughout the day. Residents come and go unpredictably. Without proper planning, these overlapping flows collide. Elevators become chokepoints. The building, no matter how beautiful, becomes a source of daily stress.

And once the elevator core is built, there’s no easy fix. You can’t make elevators go faster than their engineered limits. You can’t add more shafts without major structural changes. You’re stuck with what you’ve got.

That’s why planning isn’t optional—it’s essential.

Designing a building isn’t just about floor space or aesthetics. It’s about movement. It’s about understanding how people flow through a space—not just during peak hours, but throughout the day, across seasons, and in response to external factors like public transport, parking availability, and even weather.

Consider a building near a major train station. Morning peaks are intense. Or a tower with a gym and end-of-trip facilities—suddenly, everyone’s using the elevators to travel to and from the basement levels at 7:00AM, 7:15AM in the morning or between 11:30AM and 12:30AM so they can attend the yoga or Pilates class that the tenant experience team have worked so hard to promote. Or a building with a rooftop bar that opens at 4:30PM ferrying patrons in the opposite direction to the existing traffic—now you’ve got nighttime peaks too. These aren’t edge cases. They’re everyday realities.

This is where modern elevator technologies can help—but only if they’re part of the plan from the start.

Destination control systems group passengers by destination, reducing stops and improving efficiency. Double-deck elevators move two floors at once, effectively doubling capacity without doubling shafts. Smart building integrations can adjust elevator behaviour based on real-time occupancy, weather, or even calendar data. But none of these systems can compensate for a fundamentally under-designed core.

And even the best technology needs breathing room. Elevators should never operate at their limits all day, every day. Just like highways need shoulders and emergency lanes, elevator systems need buffer capacity. This ensures that when one elevator is out of service—or demand spikes unexpectedly—the system can still cope.

Because a good elevator system isn’t just about speed. It’s about resilience.

Even in buildings where the number of elevators is technically sufficient, users may still experience frustratingly slow service. Why? Because elevators can be poorly calibrated or inefficiently programmed—leading to sluggish acceleration, suboptimal door timings, and unnecessary stops. These issues often go unnoticed by non-specialists, but their impact is tangible: longer wait times, reduced handling capacity, overcrowded cars, and rising user dissatisfaction.

With precise traffic measurement, passenger flow analysis, and expert system tuning, it’s often possible to restore—or even enhance—the performance of an existing lift system. In many cases, traffic capacity can be improved by 20–30% simply by re-optimising software parameters and dispatching logic.

There may also be opportunities to slightly increase traffic design parameters such as acceleration or door speeds, though this requires a detailed engineering review to ensure safety and compliance. Additionally, vertical traffic congestion can often be alleviated by redefining the lift strategy—such as skipping selected car park floors or segmenting traffic zones.

These types of optimisations require advanced simulation tools and real-world expertise. Digital twin models can replicate actual lift behaviour, test proposed changes, and provide data-driven recommendations. Beyond traffic flow, system reliability and ride comfort can also be significantly improved through comprehensive maintenance audits and resolution of latent faults—ensuring all lifts are fully operational when it matters most, like during the Monday morning rush.

So, the smartest way to get it right? Bring in a specialist. A professional elevator and escalator consultant doesn’t just count elevators. They understand the science of vertical transport. They run simulations. They model traffic. They ask the right questions. They help you design a system that works—not just on opening day, but for the life of the building.

Because in the end, a building that moves well is a building that lives well.

If you need help to eliminate the vertical traffic jam in your building contact us: info.aus@elevatingstudio.com