Any high rise I have worked in seems to have a rotation of elevator engineers always fixing various shafts. In not so frequently used buildings, the elevators seem to be the first thing to degrade. I am no elevator engineer, but I assume they are not trivial to maintain. So my question: is this method worth the wear and tear on the elevator?<p>While the shafts are already there, I assume lift specifications are much more inline with a few people, and not literal tons of wet sand, so they would need to be retrofitted. Also maintenance seems much harder on a closed-in elevator than a typical crane or a bridge crane over a pit.