Lift Upgrading Programme - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Lift Upgrading Programme (LUP) is a Singapore

Singapore

Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...

Housing and Development Board (HDB) project which upgrades and improves the facilities of the lifts at HDB flat

Apartment

An apartment or flat is a self-contained housing unit that occupies only part of a building...

s which became an issue in the 2006 general election

Singapore general election, 2006

The 2006 Singapore parliamentary general election was held on 6 May 2006. 1.22 million out of the 2.16 million eligible Singaporeans voted for Members of Parliament and elected their next government. The People's Action Party , in its first election under Lee Hsien Loong, won 66.6% of the overall...

. This project is for housing blocks built before the year 1990, which were built with lift

Elevator

An elevator is a type of vertical transport equipment that efficiently moves people or goods between floors of a building, vessel or other structures...

s that only serve some floors to meet privacy demands and to cut costs. A poll

Opinion poll

An opinion poll, sometimes simply referred to as a poll is a survey of public opinion from a particular sample. Opinion polls are usually designed to represent the opinions of a population by conducting a series of questions and then extrapolating generalities in ratio or within confidence...

with a 75% majority (calculated among citizen households) in favor is needed for the upgrading to begin. The non-citizen residents who stay in the same HDB block have no polling rights.

Overview

Singapore

is an island country with land limited to 700 square kilometers and a population of 4 million; this population density means it is inevitable that most of its residents must live in high-rise apartments and work in high-rise commercial and industrial buildings. Elevators, escalators and moving walks have become a very important part of day-to-day life in Singapore

Singapore

.

The HDB started the Lift Telemonitoring System (TMS) in 1984 to monitor lifts in high-rise public housing. As at Aug 2007, more than 17,500 lifts are monitored by the system. TMS uses SCADA

SCADA

SCADA generally refers to industrial control systems : computer systems that monitor and control industrial, infrastructure, or facility-based processes, as described below:...

technology to monitor the status of the lifts in real-time from a centralized master station for events such as breakdown and trapped passengers. The lift maintenance companies are automatically notified of any problem and in most cases, repairs are carried out even before a complaint is received. The introduction of TMS has resulted in better lift performance as historical data allowed the Town Councils, who are maintaining the HDB estates, to pinpoint problem areas and improve the method of maintenance. Besides detecting problems with the lifts, TMS can also be used to carry out remote testing of lifts and other emergency standby equipment.

The HDB has begun to build more apartment buildings that are taller than 30 stories. For these buildings, existing elevator specifications such as speed, central system and hoist way equipment, will have to be improved for elevator manufacturers to design, supply and install higher speed and more sophisticated types of lifts in HDB estates to ensure better elevator ride, comfort and safety.

The Singapore

Singapore

government is in the process of renovating the older public housing estates. All elevators installed with staged landings are to be changed so they stop at all floors. The older, conventional relay controlled type would be replaced by new generation lifts with microprocessor control of elevators. It is estimated that S$5 billion would be spent on the upgrading of elevators over the next decade.

Lift elevator safety

New modern elevators
Elevator
An elevator is a type of vertical transport equipment that efficiently moves people or goods between floors of a building, vessel or other structures...

are designed to be fail-safe and user-friendly to prevent accidents. The Singapore Lift and Escalator Contractors and Manufacturers Association (SLECMA) have set up a safety committee to create awareness in the usage of elevators and escalators.

The association ensures the lifts are installed under the following guidelines:

Prevent any part of the passenger from danger at the leading edges.
Prevent closing of elevator doors when passengers approach, stand near or at the door edge, even from a flat angle.
- 2.5 cm from lift cabin.
- 3.0 cm from lift lobby.
- 50 cm for door horizontal sensing.
- 1.8 m for door vertical sensing.
Should not fail if any fail-safe related to safety device fails.
Response time of the sensing device should be less than 50 milliseconds.
Stopping time of the door should be less than 200 milliseconds.
The voice & motor noise within control requirements.
Smoke Control
Reliability of Electrical Power Supply
Effects of Fire
Effects of Water
Effects of Electro-Radiation

Lifts and politics

Also see : Singapore general election, 2006
Singapore general election, 2006
The 2006 Singapore parliamentary general election was held on 6 May 2006. 1.22 million out of the 2.16 million eligible Singaporeans voted for Members of Parliament and elected their next government. The People's Action Party , in its first election under Lee Hsien Loong, won 66.6% of the overall...

The upgrading of public housing, including the Lift Upgrading Programme (LUP), was a major issue in the recent general elections

Politics of Singapore

The politics of Singapore takes the form of a parliamentary republic whereby the President of Singapore is the head of state, the Prime Minister of Singapore is the head of government, and of a multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the cabinet. Cabinet has the general direction and...

. The People's Action Party

People's Action Party

The People's Action Party is the leading political party in Singapore. It has been the city-state's ruling political party since 1959....

(PAP) had tied the scheduling of housing upgrades to the number of votes the party received in the election. The PAP argues that government is successful in raising the standard of living in the country, and those who support its various policies, including the upgrading, should be given priority. In the hotly contested Aljunied GRC, George Yeo

George Yeo

George Yeo Yong-Boon is a former politician from Singapore. A member of the governing People's Action Party , he served in the Cabinet from 1991 to 2011 as the Minister for Information and the Arts , Minister for Health , Minister for Trade and Industry and Minister for Foreign Affairs...

(PAP) has placed lift upgrading the "top of [his] priority list" so that the lift would stop on every floor in as many blocks as possible. Sylvia Lim of the Workers' Party

Workers' Party of Singapore

The Workers' Party of Singapore is a centre-left opposition political party in Singapore. The party currently has six elected seats in Parliament, with the party's Secretary-General Low Thia Khiang, Chairman Sylvia Lim, Chen Show Mao, Muhamad Faisal Manap and Pritam Singh serving as Members of...

(WP) accused the PAP of being selective in its upgrading programmes, arguing that this is a divisive policy.

External links

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