Number of elevators (along with their size & speed) are primarily determined by

design of the building, usable areas of each floor, number of floors, and height
of each floor. The elevator system required is calculated (or estimated)
accordingly based on:

1. Population to be served (represented by handling capacity of an elevator)

2. Passenger waiting time waiting for an elevator

Both are interrelated.

Population to be served: One needs to know the number of people the

elevators are to be planned for. Figuring the number of people can be a tricky
business, firstly one has to calculate the total population in a building which
could be unknown if it’s a speculative project, secondly, not all the people would
want to go to the same floors at the same time.

Let’s take the example of an office building. Office buildings can be single or
multi-tenanted. They could have different offices at different floors or a single
office occupying the whole building. In both cases, the number of people
occupying each floor would be different and, to add to the complexity different,
people or groups of people would have different office timings. You also need
to factor in things like people working at home, on holidays, vacant posts etc.

Population of each office will depend on the type of office; call centers generally
pack in the most people, whereas corporate floors are sparsely populated. In
case the building is not known specifically, (as is not in most cases), there are
standards set by various building authorities based on actual studies of
population of various types of buildings. Each country has building codes or
national standards as a recommended guideline.

Once the population is estimated, you need to figure out who wants to go where
and at what time? Offices generally have peak traffic at morning going up to
various floors, from the main lobby, between floors (and/or down) during lunch
time and going down in the evening. In apartments, it can be totally different.

This is where traffic analysis comes in, to figure out peak travel numbers
between various floors at various times, rate and duration of peak travel time
(could be hundreds in a five-minute period or sometimes spread over an hour).
Traffic analysis also takes into consideration dispersal of population by all other
modes of transportation such as stairs and escalators.
Once this is known, you need to then decide what the waiting time should be
for an elevator.

Passenger waiting Time: This is a very important number (if not the most) and
a major point in any building performance indicator. Normally people are more
impatient in office buildings than residential ones; hence acceptable waiting
times in apartments tend to be almost double of office buildings. Waiting times
are again recommended by standards and codes based on user studies done
over many years for different types of buildings. For example, a waiting time of
less than 20 seconds is excellent and 40 seconds is poor for an office building
and could be up to 90 seconds for apartments.

You could design an elevator system to serve highest number of people with
high waiting times or least number of people with high waiting time or any of the
other combinations depending on type of building.

Ideally, elevators should be designed to serve maximum number of people with

minimum waiting time at the worst peak times so as to disperse the population
fastest.

Unfortunately, one would then end up having a large number of elevators, which
would be economically nonviable as:

• they cost a lot

• they put higher demands on electricity (to run) and have higher
maintenance and running cost
• they would occupy a huge floor area which could otherwise be usable

The building design, too, plays an important role; in buildings with large floor
plates, one group of lifts alone cannot meet all needs. These buildings are often
divided into zones based on type of traffic and are served by separate groups
of lifts to optimize the lift system.

There are recommended standards for these too, in terms of distance of lift
banks or groups to reduce travel time from one location to the eventual exit.

In skyscrapers (over 40 floors), either double deck lifts are used or lifts are
stacked in sky lobby arrangements where shuttle groups serve traffic between
main entrance floor and sky lobby. Local lift groups start from sky lobbies and
some all the way from main lobbies too. This is an effective method to optimize
the number of elevators.
 Last but not the least, number of elevators depends on the type of elevator itself.
It plays a very important role in calculation of ‘Round Trip Time’ used to
determine the number of elevators. Round Trip Time is basically the average
time taken by a lift to complete one trip, from the main lobby to all the floors of
the building and back, during up-peak traffic.

Waiting interval in seconds = Round Trip Time (RTT) / number of lifts

Round Trip Time calculation can get quite complex and I won’t get into,
Refer Steve Denton’s answer to How do you optimize the cost of installing an
elevator system in a building so that the number of people waiting at any one
floor is minimum? and The Theory and Practice of General Analysis Lift
Calculations

It’s basically a calculation of the following:

• The average number of passengers assumed to load into a car during up peak traffic
• The average highest reversal floor
• Effective population of the building
• The average number of stops made by the lift during its round trip
• The average time taken for a single person to load or unload the lift
• Delay in time consumed by making a single stop
• The time to travel a single floor and open/close the doors
• The time taken for the lift to travel between two adjacent floors at rated speed

The mechanical and electrical design of elevators is dictated according to various standards
(aka elevator codes), which may be international, national, state, regional or city based.

Whereas once many standards were prescriptive, specifying exact criteria which must be
complied with, there has recently been a shift towards more performance-based standards
where the onus falls on the designer to ensure that the elevator meets or exceeds the
standard.

Some of the national elevator standards include:

• Australia - AS1735
• Canada - CAN/CSA B44
• Europe - EN 81 series (EN 81-1, EN 81-2, EN 81-28, EN 81-70, EN 12015, EN 12016,
EN 13015, etc.)
• USA - ASME A17
Because an elevator is part of a building, it must also comply with standards relating to
earthquake resilience, fire standards, electrical wiring rules and so forth.

The American National Elevator Standards Group (ANESG) sets an elevator weight standard
to be 2200 lbs.

Additional requirements relating to access by disabled persons may be mandated by laws or

regulations such as the Americans with Disabilities Act.
References:

Elevator

[Link]

Lift Passenger Traffic Patterns: Applications, Current Knowledge and Measurement

The Theory and Practice of General Analysis Lift Calculations

CIBSE Guide D: Transportation systems in Buildings.

Nation Building Code (of India)

Elevator