it. Movies can feature creatures
emerging in lifts and start eating
up the passengers, or some
horror movies even feature
bloody water gushing into the lift
and drowning the victims – but
they cannot create such dramas
with escalators.
When the rope attached
to the lift cage snaps, the lift
cage falls. But when the lift
cage falls the brakes take over
and stop the fall – this means,
movie directors have to create
a scene where all the brakes
fail in order to create a free fall
scene out of it. On the contrary,
the most damage you can do to
an escalator is to make it stop,
and turn it into a staircase –
that’s it!
The escalator is a beautiful
piece of equipment, the ride
on an escalator gives the
passenger an uninterrupted
shopping experience with a
vertical moving journey having
a full 360° visual and audio
environment. This is unlike
getting into a lift, where you
are visually disconnected from
the environment as you go
from floor to floor. If you want
to get to your destination faster
when riding an escalator, just
walk from step to step, and
this gives you a good sense of
“achievement” and satisfaction,
that you are a person who
would not settle with the pace
of the world.
BREAKDOWN
‘Man trapped’, this is one of
the greatest nightmares of
mall operators. It is definitely a
disastrous shopping experience
getting trapped in a lift while
holding bags of merchandise,
shoulder to shoulder with
strangers – before people start
to sweat or pass gas…
An escalator will never have
this problem; broken down
escalator? it just becomes a
staircase, just walk up or down.
CLEITHROPHOBIA
In the Asian context, riding a
lift is a socio-emotive thing
in a culture where we do not
greet strangers, neither do we
show happy faces entering a
lift full of strangers. If we were
tucked at the back of the lift
car, instead of asking someone
to press the floor button for
us, we would rather stretch out
our hand to press it ourselves
– very Malaysian. A quiet lift is
bad, mirrors in the lift are bad,
those few seconds of journey
in the lift feel like years of
silence. We cannot wait to get
it over with and just get out of
the lift once we have reached
our floor. We are at the mercy
of luck, depending on where we
are positioned in the lift, where
the only pastime is to count the
number of moles the person in
front of us has on his neck.
BUT IT AIN’T ALL
SUNSHINE AND
RAINBOWS
Ju s t like any p ie c e o f
mechanical equipment, things
that move need maintenance,
including vertical transportation
equipment with more than a
thousand moving parts. In a
country with more than 550
shopping centres, the total
number of lifts and escalators
adds up to a very large number,
and at any one moment of time,
these machines are serving
thousands and thousands of
passengers. There are a few
processes in the industry that
would help us to minimise lift and
escalator accidents or defects
- firstly, consulting engineers
and architects must choose
the right specifications and
placement of these equipments
strategically at different parts of
the mall, factoring in the volume
of passengers, that’s “doing
things the right way”.
When lifts and escalators are
installed and maintained under
the original manufacturer’s own
best practices, and DOSH’s
in sp e c tion and approval
guidelines for installations
are followed, this is when
the installation of lifts and
escalators is being “done
the right way”. Nevertheless,
accidents do happen and
when they happen, it saddens
everybody. Therefore, best
engineering practices must
be enforced throughout the
entire value chain from design,
installation and operation
of ver tical transpor tation
equipment. Over the years,
the industry has progressed
from “compliance” based
applications to “best practice”
models. There are some great
new features which were
voluntarily implemented and
promoted by lift manufacturers
and mall operators, such as
energy saving escalators with
sensors, or escalators with
audible warnings on top of the
existing visual warning signs and
stickers on the equipment.
So for best practices, mall
management must ensure
escalators do not become stairs
at any time.
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