> Among other things, elevators are much stricter and so less frequent than any other country
Speaking from experience with elevators in various countries: Let's keep the part where, for instance, elevators need a door. (And I'm sure I haven't experienced anywhere close to the long tail of bad elevators.) Some regulations make sense.
But if there are ways to make elevators substantially faster without being unsafe, that'd be lovely. What do US elevators fail to do that they could be doing?
And in the US, nobody in the relevant unions or regulators cares about cities - elevator workers and firefighters are all suburbanite pickup-truck-Americans. So they're rarely personally interested in anything that isn't about driving a big car around really fast. This has a big impact on road layouts and the outside of buildings, because of course everyone listens to firefighters, but all they want to do is drive a big red truck everywhere with nothing stopping them.
(Which sometimes leads to them eg shutting down pedestrian safety improvements, and always leads to big wide access roads.)
Speaking from experience with elevators in various countries: Let's keep the part where, for instance, elevators need a door. (And I'm sure I haven't experienced anywhere close to the long tail of bad elevators.) Some regulations make sense.
But if there are ways to make elevators substantially faster without being unsafe, that'd be lovely. What do US elevators fail to do that they could be doing?