Harmonizing elevator regulations
North America is a surprisingly small market compared to the EU
The EU has put a lot of effort into harmonizing regulations for elevators (which were previously national). The US and Canada, unlike most of the world, haven't adopted the EU standards.
Daniel Trubman asked about an escalator at 30th Street Station in Philadelphia which is out of service. Turns out it won’t be fixed for eight months:
We spoke with the team who is handling the repairs and unfortunately, we are looking at an ETA of approx. 8 months before the escalators are up & running. The parts needed to complete the repairs are difficult to acquire and take time to be manufactured. Thank you!
Why does it take so long to get parts? An explanation on Twitter by Stephen J. Smith:
The US and Canada have a separate certification process for elevator/escalator parts from almost the entire rest of the world, so we are excluded from most of the global market for parts. This stuff is fairly standardized, but North American regulators choose not to participate
A few decades ago every country had a different code, but the EU made a concerted effort to harmonize European codes. Since Europe has long dominated elevator manufacturing and (until recently being overtaken by China) installations, a lot of effort went into perfecting regulations. So in the past few decades, almost every country in the world has started just adopting EU standards, and therefore EU parts certification. The ONLY exceptions in the entire world now are the U.S. and Canada, and Japan (which I know nothing about)
So let’s say you produce some little $230 part. You need to get it certified, to prove it meets regulatory standards. This costs $500,000 for European (global) standards, then another $500,000 for the US/Canada. But the global market is 10x the size of the US/Canada market, plus there’s an extra cost in making a small design tweak to account for some irrelevant difference between the standards. So most manufacturers just pay the $500k to get global certification and then decide spending the same to access a market 1/10 the size isn’t worth it.
And voilà, now that $230 part you need is only made by two companies for the US/Canada vs. 10 for Europe, so you’re waiting 3 weeks for it to be made and shipped. Oh also the price is $350. Hope your bldg’s got an extra elevator! If it doesn’t maybe we can expedite it for $2,000
The US has about the same number of elevators as Italy alone (about one million).
If European elevator safety is comparable to Canadian elevator safety, this seems like an opportunity to adopt European regulations and allow apartment buildings in Canada to use EU-certified elevators.
More
A paper that gets into some of the details, from a North American source that’s opposed to simply adopting the EU standards. Should ASME A17.1/CSA B44 “Converge” with ISO 8100? International Association of Elevator Consultants, October 2018.
Interview with Esfandiar Gharibaan, chair of CEN TC10, LIFTjournal, September 2022.
Interview with René Hermann, chair of the working group CEN TC10 WG1 ("Lifts and service lifts"), LIFTjournal, January 2022.
European standards for lifts. A post from CEN/CENELEC describing the history of the European harmonization efforts, September 2021.
ASME A17.1-2022: Safety Code for Elevators and Escalators. An overview of the North American standard by Brad Kelechava, October 2023. Also see A brief history of elevators, August 2022.
Up and then down. A long article by Nick Paumgarten about elevators and elevator safety in the New Yorker, July 2014.