An elevator poses a risk to life: every fifth elevator in the country has reached its end of life

Can you imagine a modern city without elevators in apartment buildings and multi-storey public buildings? Without an elevator, for many people their own housing and the apartments of their loved ones, the places where they work, relax, and receive necessary services would become inaccessible. It is unlikely that anyone will imagine this seriously. Meanwhile, it seems that such a prospect is not excluded at all. Of course, this will not happen overnight, but the situation is developing in this direction.

I judge from reports of what experts discussed at the annual conference of Russian elevator operators, held in Moscow on November 22 and 23. Firstly, the pace of replacement of elevators in apartment buildings that have reached the end of their service life, and previously insufficient, has been steadily slowing down in the last three years. Every fifth of the almost half a million elevators in the country has exhausted its service life, but continues to be used. So if someone gets hurt due to a technical failure of the elevator, it will not be the manufacturer who will be responsible, but the owner of the building who allowed its operation. In residential buildings, a management company acts on its behalf, but the owners – you and I – usually ride in such an elevator, not knowing or even thinking about the risk.

Secondly, the quality of elevator service is decreasing, competitions for which are increasingly being won due to low prices by small organizations without sufficient material resources, experience and responsibility, which increases the risks of failures and accidents. Large companies are forced to match their prices and reduce their costs. Thus, the former monopolist of the capital’s elevator industry now has one specialist servicing from 80 to 300 elevators, and this cannot but affect the quality. They say that it is common practice for employees of the operating organization to disable the elevator safety system so that it stops stopping the elevator, which is working, but poorly, because it was installed with violations that cannot be corrected in the future.

Thirdly, although three quarters of new elevators are supplied by Russian factories, the demand for cheaper Turkish and Chinese elevators is growing, replacing the European brands that have left us and competing with domestic ones. Experts say that they are designed not for the usual 25 years of operation, like Russian and European ones, but for 10. So over a quarter of a century, their buyers will have to pay for stinginess as much as two and a half times. I think, however, that in most cases this is caused by a lack of funds to purchase an elevator with a full service life, when the time has come to replace the used one.

Fourthly, the entire industry – elevator factories, installation and maintenance organizations – is acutely short of specialists. This won’t surprise anyone now. Personnel shortage has become the number one problem over the past year for most sectors of the economy, which compete for scarce workers, attracting them with higher salaries. In the elevator industry, such opportunities are limited by the unwillingness of owners to pay more for the elevator, its installation and maintenance. In relation to apartment buildings, where we are the owners, this is largely due to our low awareness of the condition and prospects of our elevators and the risks associated with them.

There is another serious problem with elevators, dating back to 2012. It was then that, in order to reduce the burden on business, the government removed elevators from the list of hazardous production facilities. At the same time, their owners were released from the obligation to insure their liability. Mandatory annual inspections of the condition of elevators by Rostechnadzor authorities immediately stopped, and insurance companies stopped assessing the risks associated with elevators. But accidents and accidents, previously extremely rare, began to occur regularly; in two years, about one and a half hundred people became their victims.

Since this was difficult not to notice, in 2014 elevators were returned to the status of hazardous production facilities, and Rostechnadzor was given the authority to record and investigate accidents and the obligation to maintain a register of elevators. However, he was not allowed to inspect maintenance and repair organizations, as well as those who assess the technical condition of the elevator facilities. The department’s experts, meanwhile, were clear in their assessments from the very beginning: to ensure safety, control of the entire industry is needed, starting from the stage of designing elevator equipment and installation.

But instead, in mid-2021, Rostechnadzor’s powers were cut even further, depriving it of the right to monitor compliance with mandatory requirements for elevators and their installation. And control over their content and use is completely transferred to management companies. The familiar rake did not fail, it regularly hit the forehead, but, unfortunately, not those who “reset” state supervision again, but the unfortunate elevator users who became victims of a new increase in their accident rate. This time they came to their senses a little faster than ten years earlier: from March 1, 2023, the government returned to Rostechnadzor the authority to control the safety of use and maintenance of elevators. But restoring the control system, which was destroyed twice in a short period, may take more than one year.

Control is necessary, but it will not help solve the problem of timely replacement of elevators that have reached the end of their service life. I can judge its severity from data from the Elevator Union: in 2019, in six Russian regions, two-thirds of elevators had been in operation for more than 25 years, and in another twenty, half. Two-thirds of all replacements took place in Moscow, the Moscow region and St. Petersburg, and only Moscow set itself the task of starting to replace all elevators in the next two years immediately after 25 years of operation. In St. Petersburg, they were replaced annually by two to three times less than they exhausted their resource.

Over the next four years, the situation did not fundamentally improve; rather, on the contrary: new elevators, their installation, maintenance and maintenance became more expensive. Most regions cannot independently provide the necessary replacement due to the weakness of municipal and regional budgets and the unwillingness of the population to pay more for major repairs. This means that a federal program is needed to ensure the safety of the country’s elevator infrastructure, which would provide for financing the necessary expenses (for richer regions – their co-financing) from the federal budget. And it must be taken as soon as possible, since over time the problem will only worsen and increase the risk of accidents and loss of life.

It seems to me that such a program should be based on the principle of an elevator life cycle contract, which was discussed at a recent meeting of the Public Council under the Russian Ministry of Construction. The building owner is proposed to henceforth, to meet the need for an elevator, enter into one contract with the manufacturer or dealer, who assumes responsibility, in addition to the elevator itself, also for its installation, maintenance, maintenance and repairs during its service life. In this case, manufacturers and dealers will be most interested in the quality of their work at every stage, and competition should ensure fair prices. This model can also encourage manufacturers and dealers to attract buyers with convenient financial models of leasing or installment payments with the participation of a bank.

We need to hurry up with all this. The technical regulations of the Customs Union “Elevator Safety” directly prohibit from February 15, 2025 the operation of an elevator beyond its service life unless an assessment of its condition has been carried out and, based on its results, a decision has been made to extend this period for a certain period or to carry out work to modernize it, after whereby the service life will be extended. The majority of overdue elevators have not yet passed such an assessment. This means that management companies that have not decommissioned them will have to initiate administrative proceedings under an article of the Code of Administrative Offenses on violation of the requirements of technical regulations that create a threat of harm to human life or health; for this a fine of up to 600 thousand rubles is imposed.

Continuing to operate the elevator after such punishment entails a fine of up to 1 million rubles with confiscation of the subject of the offense, that is, the elevator itself. It is clear that the supervisory authority will not dismantle it and take it to a warehouse, but will have to seal it, and this will make its assessment and modernization impossible. If an accident with victims occurs with such an elevator, those responsible for its operation will fall under criminal liability under Article 238 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, which provides for up to 10 years of imprisonment.

In the meantime, nothing terrible has happened, residents of buildings with expired elevators have the right, as consumers, to demand from the management company compensation for moral damage, that is, their moral suffering when traveling in an elevator where there is a sign indicating the year of manufacture, from which it follows that it is older than 25 years , and therefore dangerous. But in order to enforce the court decision in favor of the tenant-consumers, the management company will offer them to collect the necessary amount as the owners of these elevators.

Such is the theater of the absurd in an elevator with a disabled security system.