The extraordinarily high cost of elevators in North America
After over 18 months of work, our first research report is now out, on the high cost of elevators in the United States and Canada. We explore the causes and consequences of elevators that cost three times as much as in any other country, and what can be done to bring costs back in line, so that North America can build the accessible apartments that we need to fix our spiraling housing crisis.
Out full report is available as a free PDF download here, and an executive summary of our findings is available here.
The report approaches the issue of high elevator costs and low availability in North America from a comparative perspective, drawing on experiences in Europe in particular to examine the issue through the lenses of affordability, access, accessibility, codes and standards, and labor. We present the first public comparison between costs in the United States and our high-income peers in Europe (both for installations and ongoing items like maintenance), as well as the most up-to-date comparison of global elevator stocks. We look at the cost drivers, in three main categories – cabin sizes, labor productivity, and technical codes and standards unrelated to cabin size. We look at a few different cases of how other countries approach various issues related to elevators, from how China retrofits elevators into occupied walk-up apartment buildings (common in Europe too, but almost unheard of project in the U.S. and Canada) to France’s recent tightening of building accessibility requirements to Poland’s efforts to improve technical and vocational education to meet the labor needs of the elevator industry in the wake of its accession to the European Union.
Finally, we present practical advice to policymakers in the U.S. and Canada who want to bring elevator costs down to earth. The report’s author is available to answer questions (from reporters, industry professionals, policymakers, or anybody else at stephen@centerforbuilding.org. We are also interested in speaking with people in and around the elevator industry for updates to the report (see below for more details).
The work to produce this 122-page report, with 13 pages of bibliography collecting sources in eight different languages, took around a year and a half. It involved around 100 interviews, with everybody from industry professionals to wheelchair users to developers, in multiple different countries and languages. The Center for Building is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, and relies on philanthropy to continue this work – please get in touch if you’re interested in making a contribution.
This report was a collaboration between the Center for Building in North America, Direction (Poland), Geli Tadonki (France), and Moon Hoon (South Korea), with design by Studio Folder.
In the future, we may update this report, and are interested in continuing to speak with people in and around the elevator industry. Please email report author Stephen Smith if you would like to talk (fully off-the-record, if you’d like). Some topics we are interested in pursuing further include, but are not limited to:
Current elevator pricing in Europe, Asia, and Oceania, particularly in higher-income countries (Scandinavia, the U.K., and Oceania are of particular interest)
Current elevator pricing in Canada and the United States (outside of the Northeast)
The exact effects of cabin size on pricing, either in North America or abroad
Fair Housing Amendments Act referenced elevator accessibility standards
Certification of EN 81/ISO 8100-compliant parts to sell in North America and efforts by foreign manufacturers to enter the North American market
Current pricing for A17.1/B44-certified parts (nonproprietary parts catalogs, etc.)
North American vs. European/Asian electrical standards as applied to elevators
Construction costs for elevator hoistways
IBC requirements (elevator hoistway opening protection, two-way audiovisual communication, etc.)
Settlement agreements between the IUEC and major manufacturers
IUEC work rules in Canada
Work timelines and labor requirements for installations, modernizations, service, and maintenance in North America and abroad