A lift and an escalator both move people between floors, and that is where the similarity ends. One carries a batch of people on demand to any level; the other carries a continuous stream between two. Look inside each of them, then see when a building needs one, the other, a second one, or both — the question we are asked most at concept stage, and the most expensive one to get wrong.
Each one explains what the part does, and what it means for you when it wears out.
Indicative figures for typical Australian commercial installations. Every building is different — these are the shapes of the two answers, not a specification.
| Consideration | Lift | Escalator |
|---|---|---|
| How it moves people | In batches, on demand, to any served level. Waiting is part of the design. | Continuously, in one direction, between two adjacent levels. No waiting. |
| Typical speed | 1.0–2.5 m/s in commercial buildings; higher in tall towers. | 0.5 m/s is the norm; 0.65 m/s on some transport installations. |
| Handling capacity | Set by car size and round-trip time, not speed alone. Assessed by traffic analysis. | Continuous. On the EN 115 basis a 1000 mm step band at 0.5 m/s gives about 9,000 persons/hour theoretical; design figures are normally taken well below that. |
| Rise served | Effectively unlimited — one unit can serve every floor in the building. | One storey per unit in practice. Multiple floors means a bank of units and the floor area to land them. |
| What it takes out of the building | A shaft, a pit and headroom, plus machine space where required. | A long truss on the diagonal, a pit at each end, and a floor opening top and bottom. |
| Accessibility | The compliant path of travel for people who cannot use stairs. | Not an accessible path. An escalator never removes the need for a lift. |
| When one is out of service | That unit's service is lost, and the remaining cars carry the load. | It stops. Whether it can be used as a fixed stair depends on the unit and the approval. |
| Where the wear shows up | Doors first, then ropes, then the controller and drive. | Step chain, steps and rollers, handrails, and comb plates. |
| Major works cycle | Modernisation typically considered from around 20–25 years, driven by obsolescence as much as wear. | Similar horizon, but the decision is usually replace-the-unit rather than modernise in place. |
Where a figure matters commercially, we verify it against the equipment and the applicable standards for that installation rather than a table.
If the building has more than one storey and anyone other than the owner uses it, assume a lift. The National Construction Code and the Disability (Access to Premises) Standards require an accessible path of travel to the levels people are entitled to reach, and a stair is not one. Beyond compliance there is furniture, deliveries, prams, and the tenant with a broken ankle. At concept stage the question is rarely whether — it is how many, how big and how fast.
Two things move a building from one lift to two. The first is availability: a single lift out of service — a breakdown, a scheduled inspection, a modernisation that takes it out for weeks — puts everyone above the ground floor on the stairs. As a rule of thumb, once a residential building passes about five levels or forty apartments, two lifts is the conversation we expect to have for that reason alone. The second is traffic: when the round-trip time of one car pushes the average interval past the targets in the PCA guide and CIBSE Guide D, waiting becomes a daily complaint. Two smaller lifts almost always outperform one large one on both counts — and a traffic analysis, not a rule of thumb, is what settles it.
An escalator earns its place when a large number of people move between two adjacent levels continuously — a retail podium, a transport interchange, a stadium concourse, a food court above the mall. Over a one-storey rise a single 1000 mm escalator moves people at a rate no lift bank can match, with nobody waiting, and in retail its visibility is a design tool in itself: it pulls customers to the upper level. Units are usually installed in pairs so one runs up and one down, and reversed at close of trade to clear the building. Below a few thousand people an hour between those two levels, a good lift bank and a generous stair are cheaper to buy, run and maintain.
Most buildings that ask the question need both. The escalator carries the crowd between the two levels that generate it; the lift serves everyone who cannot use an escalator and every level it does not reach. An escalator never removes the need for a lift — but a lift bank sized to carry a retail peak on its own will be oversized, expensive, and still queued at lunchtime.
Where the flow is heavy but the rise is small — a carpark up to a supermarket, a long airport concourse, a shopping centre split-level — an inclined or horizontal moving walk carries the trolleys, prams and luggage an escalator cannot take. Same drive, same truss, same maintenance profile, and the same rule: it does not replace the lift.
The honest answer is that most buildings that ask the question need both — an escalator to move the crowd between the two floors that carry it, and a lift to serve everyone and every level the escalator does not. The design question is not usually which, but how many, how big, and how fast.
That is settled by traffic analysis against the population the building will actually carry, not by copying the building next door. We do that work independently of any lift company, so the answer is not shaped by whose equipment is being sold.
Ask us about a traffic study