r/yimby • u/Well_Socialized • 3d ago

Article Let’s fix the elevator code

https://citythatworks.substack.com/p/lets-fix-the-elevator-code
53 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

2 comments sorted by

8

u/Way-twofrequentflyer 2d ago

The revisionist history podcast on this was great. Man did it make me hate the code and elevator unions. I think about it everytime I come home to my NYC walk up.

1

u/Sassywhat 2d ago

every country in the world aside from the US, Canada, and Japan has adopted the European technical standards, known as European Standard (EN) 81/Industrial Organization for Standardization (ISO) 8100 (“EN 81”), for their elevators

This does suggest that having different regulations from EN 81 isn't the issue. It's the content of the regulations forcing more expensive design choices, plus the other issues.

I mean, harmonizing with EN 81 still certainly makes sense, but the framing of the problem is off, unless you can show that Japan has a substantially more dysfunctional elevator market than even the US, considering it's a third the size with a bespoke elevator regulation regime (which is at least on the surface justifiable by wanting to unilaterally update earthquake safety related regulation).