Elevators & Escalators

Some trivia about the moving rooms and walkways that help us get around our built-up city. • Singapore has approximately 70,000 passenger lifts and 7,000 escalators. • There is a Facebook group called “Elevator Enthusiasts of Singapore” – more than 600 people follow it! • The island’s first electric passenger lift was installed in 1906 in Collyer Quay, and the first escalator at Orchard Theatre (now Cathay Cinemas) in 1965. • For a fun elevator ride, try Pan Pacific Singapore. These outdoor observation lifts were once the world’s fastest (3.5 metres per second). • Bras Basah Station has the longest escalator of any MRT station in Singapore, at 41.3 metres. • Singapore’s ongoing Lift Upgrading Programme (LUP) upgrades old HDB blocks that didn’t originally have lifts, so people on every floor had better accessibility. • The Hamilton Scotts residential complex has a “parking lot in the sky”; an elevator takes your car directly up to a personal display area off your living room. • In 1993, a national “healthy living” campaign encouraged Singaporeans to take stairs rather than use escalators, but it didn’t gain momentum, so to speak. • There are three great glass elevators for public use at the National Library – and, no, they don’t take you to the Roald Dahl shelves. (A joke for bookworms!) • Schindler Lifts Singapore won the “Elevator World Project of the Year 2020” for its work on Jewel Changi Airport, which features 178 elevators, escalators and moving walks.