TECHNOLOGY
DWARFING THE EMPIRE State Building is no mean feat . Standing at 541 metres , the One World Trade Centre is the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere . Gazing out from the observatory at the summit , New York is packaged neatly into a scale model . The Empire State , a matchstick . The Statue of Liberty , a fingernail .
The mode of travel to the top is equally impressive – a high speed lift from the ground taking less than a minute , travelling faster than Usain Bolt and somehow without popping any ears . The One World Trade Center then , if ever there was doubt , was the perfect setting to unveil a game changer in the elevator industry .
A quick 40-level descent to floor 63 and executives from thyssenkrupp Elevator , installers of the Bolt lift , and Microsoft address eagerly gathered members of international and trade press . The not-so secret was formally revealed – we had found out the night before .
Downtime “ More than 50 percent of the global population are living in cities already . To keep up with that we have to build a city the size of Manhattan every day ,” muses Andreas Schierenbeck , CEO of thyssenkrupp Elevator .
The numbers keep on coming . Schierenbeck tells me the numbers of buildings standing at 200 metres and higher has tripled in the space of 15 years , while the number of elevators transporting a billion people up and down buildings every day numbers some 12 million – the One World Trade Center alone with 71 .
“ An average elevator stops working around four to six times a year , and all of this means as a worldwide industry we are responsible for 190 million hours of downtime annually ,” he adds . “ We can certainly do better , and we
“ We can certainly do better , and we are saying here with our partners in Microsoft that we will do better ”
– Andreas Schierenbeck , CEO of thyssenkrupp Elevator
18 January 2017