This afternoon, the lifts of West Wing Residences no longer stopped at every floor. Only “sky garden floors” were serviced, and lifts were not able to be entered or exited on every other floor. Two-thirds of the residents have to now resort to climbing up 1 or 2 flights of stairs, depending on which floor they resided on.

“Sky garden groups” are groups of 3 consecutive floors, with the bottommost floor, called the “sky garden floor”, being a multiple of 3. For example, floors 12, 13, and 14 are part of a single “sky garden group” in Saga College Tower B. There is no easy stair access between adjacent sky garden groups, for instance floors 5 and 6, 8 and 9, or 11 and 12 are all not connected by garden stairs. The fire stairs are behind fire doors and are far down the corridor from the lifts and are too steep and narrow to traverse safely while under load.

This creates several inconveniences for residents not on “sky garden floors”:

-       Firstly, since water coolers are installed on only the first floors, multiple trips must be made per day for residents to fill water bottles. The extra flights of stairs are unnecessary hurdles to each journey. 

-       Secondly, residents moving large packages will have to take multiple flights of stairs up to their floors. Furthermore, wait times for lifts will be increased as lift occupants must wait for residents of similar sky garden groups to load their belongings into the lift before closing the lift doors.

-       Thirdly, the laundry rooms are on the ground floor of each tower. Residents must carry heavy loads of laundry, hampers, and detergents up and down flights of stairs, which creates extra risks for falls and injuries. In addition, lifts are not accessible from non-sky garden floors, so residents must take the stairs on both journeys going in and out of the lifts.

Unlike Cinnamon College, the residents of West Wing are divided into several tower blocks, with at most 120 residents in Saga Tower B, 240 residents in Saga Tower A, and 400 residents in Elm, each sharing 2 lifts per tower. Cinnamon College has a maximum of 670 residents sharing 3 lifts, not including the faculty floor. The drastically smaller number of residents in West Wing towers does not justify a hard-coded limit to which floors are accessible in a failed attempt to increase efficiency.

Even if such a system must be hard-coded, the lifts should stop at the middle floors (eg. 4, 7,10, 13 for Saga B) of each sky garden group instead of the bottom floor, so every resident only needs to walk a maximum of 1 flight of stairs. The best solution however is to make not pressing consecutive floors a common practice instead of hard-coding the lifts. There can’t be consecutive floors pressed if only 1 floor needs to be pressed. Educate the people, not the lifts. This system works decently well for Cinnamon College with well over 600 residents, so why should it be different here in West Wing?

Allow the lifts in West Wing to access every floor. Stop dividing our communities. Reduce the risks of falls and injuries. Save time, and also save lives. Every floor is created equally.