Cool elevators

Here I am on the twentieth floor overlooking the San Francisco bay and watching the ferry come into the Ferry Building. Pretty posh - I'm trying to enjoy it while I can until we move next week.

But what I wanted to write about was the super cool elevators they have in this building. In most office buildings, during "rush hour" in morning, lunch and evening you wait and wait for an elevator, and then on the way up/down you hit every single floor.

But these are "smart" elevators. Instead of pressing "Up" or "Down" buttons, what you do instead is press the floor you want to go to. The EPU (Elevator Processing Unit) then does optimal calculations based on who wants to go where, assigns elevators to routes, and then a number flashes to tell you which elevator to take. So for instance this morning we had stops on the 18th, 19th and 20th floors, and that was it. At lunch time I stopped at one other floor before heading to the lobby.

That is just so cool, and now that I think of it, so obvious. I do wish all elevators worked this way...