ELEVATOR WORLD Correspondent Dr. Lee Gray in WSJ

The Wall Street Journal called on the expertise of longtime ELEVATOR WORLD correspondent and historian Dr. Lee Gray for a November 8 article about the future of vertical transportation (VT): “Cars, Tugs — and Elevators? Big Changes Coming for Transportation in the Future.” Gray, a professor of architectural history at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, spoke to the author about TK Elevator’s MULTI — the ropeless elevator system that moves both vertically and horizontally. Although a MULTI VT system has not yet been put into use, mainly because of associated costs, Gray said he believes it will be deployed in various ways in the future. He observed MULTI could be incorporated into skyscrapers to integrate with transit systems such as subways or used in cities like Las Vegas where people need to get back and forth between a hotel and a convention center across the street. Climate change, he said, could play an additional role, with the system being used to keep people out of the heat, a similar concept to the heated skyways of Minneapolis.