# high speed lifts



## rhm (May 16, 2006)

i was riding a lift last year and a couple of guys were discussing high speed quad lifts. these guys said that they make the mountain more crowded because they shuttle more people up the hill. i thought that since they pick up slow and drop off slow that they just make the ride shorter from top to bottom, but do not really take more people up the mountain. anyone else have any ideas on this?


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## KSC (Oct 22, 2003)

Weird question. A lift operator must give this kind of stuff a lot of thought.

Here's what I think you're saying your rationale is: old style lifts just go at a constant medium speed. You may get wacked hard in the ass as you sit down on the chair, but it's going to max speed the instant you're on the lift. A modern high speed quad comes up to you nice and gently, you kiss your girl, sit down, and the lift operator tells you how much your mother loves you. The chair then slowly picks up speed as it lifts off until it reaches it's maximum speed, and then starts slowing down again near the exit. So it may be faster at max speed, but all that slowing down at the beginning and end make the average speed the same?

How did i do? I think you're way off the mark, but just trying to figure out the reasoning.

Anyway, clearly the whole point of the high speed lifts are to get more people up the mountain faster. Even if the speeds were the same, the mere fact that the chairs carry 4 or 6 people instead of 2 dramatically increases the number of people you can get up each in a day (you do the math). That, in addition to faster speed means more people on the mountain at a given time, more laps for you, shorter lift lines, more money for the ski resorts, and snow getting tracked up oh so fast.


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## rhm (May 16, 2006)

i understand that a quad lift moves more people than a double or triple chair, and i am not saying that the speeding up and slowing down averages out to the speed of a low speed lift. i am saying that it is all about the rate that a lift picks up and drops off. the chairs on a low speed lift come around and pick up four people at the same rate that the slow moving chairs on a detachable lift do. then both lifts have to drop people off at that same rate. the high speed lift moves no more people up the hill. it just make's the time on the lift shorter.


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## bshack93 (Feb 11, 2006)

you guys need more free time


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## &d (Apr 28, 2006)

so if an old lift gets 2 people every 20 seconds and a new lift gets 4 people every 40 seconds then were even, but i dont think the easy-on speed is quite half of the speed of the oldschool lifts, so, assuming lift tickets are still as affordable as they used to be, the snow is as good as it ever was, and gas prices aremt so outrageous that middle class texans cant afford to come ski, there are more people on the hill nowadays

of course, our old 3 seaters were the first to become quads, so there is a curve i dont feel like tracing.. plus some of the old two seaters were going alot faster than some of the other ones.. so .. damnit.. whos got AT gear for sale anyway? avalance safety classes anyone? know what, screw it. imstaying inside all winter


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## mjpowhound (May 5, 2006)

I don't think so. Consider if you're riding up a fixed chair next to a detachable. Think about how many chairs pass you (assuming some gapers didn't fall off at the top or bottom and it's running full speed...very rare). I don't think you pass that many at the top and bottom. If you measured it, you should find that the ratio of chairs passing by at the top and bottom is the same as in the middle: the chairs, while moving slower at the top and bottom on a high-speed, are much closer together.


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## Geezer (Oct 14, 2003)

The rope on the high speed quads is moving much faster and the on/off time doesn't factor in. You're going slow about 8 seconds at the bottom and at the top but the rest of the time you are moving very fast. Yes, it gets more skier to the top quicker to the slopes do seem to be more crowded.

Me, I put on my skins most the time and use my slow speed quads all the way up the hill.


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## yetigonecrazy (May 23, 2005)

&d said:


> so if an old lift gets 2 people every 20 seconds and a new lift gets 4 people every 40 seconds then were even, but i dont think the easy-on speed is quite half of the speed of the oldschool lifts, so, assuming lift tickets are still as affordable as they used to be, the snow is as good as it ever was, and gas prices aremt so outrageous that middle class texans cant afford to come ski, there are more people on the hill nowadays
> 
> of course, our old 3 seaters were the first to become quads, so there is a curve i dont feel like tracing.. plus some of the old two seaters were going alot faster than some of the other ones.. so .. damnit.. whos got AT gear for sale anyway? avalance safety classes anyone? know what, screw it. imstaying inside all winter



ha ha ha yeah remember how long the old keystone triple used to take? of the east river double? fifteen minutes of freedom baby! ha ha

i like old lifts, unless theyre wicked long. Monarch and Loveland both kick ass, and yeah, they have old lifts, but theyre so short you jsut lap them all day long! its only lifts like Campground at snowmass that make you just want to jump off


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## psu96 (May 9, 2006)

I can't believe I read this post. Stay away from Monarch, unless you have some goods....see you in the trees


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## KSC (Oct 22, 2003)

I'd love to refute your argument if I could just understand it.



> the chairs on a low speed lift come around and pick up four people at the same rate that the slow moving chairs on a detachable lift do. then both lifts have to drop people off at that same rate. the high speed lift moves no more people up the hill. it just make's the time on the lift shorter.


It still sounds to me like you're making the argument I just described. The "time on the lift is shorter" means time between when you plop yer ass down and when your skis hit the ground at the top. If that's shorter, than the only way for the high speed lift NOT to move more people is if you're loading people much more slowly, i.e. the gap between chairs is large.

How about an extreme example to illustrate the point:

Time on lift = difference between when you sit down in the chair and when you exit the chair

Let's suppose both lifts have only a 1 person chair so we can ignore that variable.

Suppose:
This time interval for a slow speed chair equals 10 minutes.
This time interval for a high speed chair equals 1 second.

If there are 10 chairs going up at any given time, then you get 10 people up every 10 minutes. 

Assuming there are 10 chairs going up at any given on the high speed lift, then you get 600 people up in 10 minutes.

The only way you'd get the same number is if one person shot up there, and then you didn't put another person in the next chair for another 59 seconds.

But we know the gaps between chairs are essentially the same on high speed vs. old chair.

If this doesn't convince you, try riding each chair with psu96 and I think it will become painfully obvious how much longer the old chairs take. (just joking)


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## Andy H. (Oct 13, 2003)

High-speed quads move at least 4 or 5 times as many people per hour as the old slow double chairs do. They'll gobble up a full lift maze in a few minutes whereas the old lifts would have 45 minute lift lines.


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## rhm (May 16, 2006)

it is all about the rate that people get picked up and dropped off. say you have two quad lifts running side by side. one is a high speed detachable one is a low speed. the chairs on a low speed lift come around 1 chair every 6 seconds. the chairs on a high speed lift come around 1 chair every 6 seconds also. you don't have time to load if the chairs are any closer than that. if you don't believe me just count the seconds between chairs next time you are in line. if four people unload on the low speed lift every 6 seconds and four people unload on the high speed lift every 6 seconds then they must be carrying the same number of people up the hill. the only difference is that the ride is shorter on the high speed lift. if you want to use the extreme case that was poster earlier, then how about we make it really extreme. "scotty" beam me to the top of the hill. this make the lift ride time zero. if four people get beamed to the top every 6 seconds and then the low speed lift drops four people off every 6 seconds, then you are moving the same number of people up the hill on either lift. it isn't about how fast the lift goes. the only way to move more people is to load and unload them faster, not send them up the hill faster.


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## BPskiextreme (Aug 4, 2006)

I am a liftie.... it puts more Texans on the Mountain


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## brendodendo (Jul 18, 2004)

I'll use meters in this case because they are easier to talk about rather than feet, yard and miles.

Lets assume the there are 2 lifts side by side and both carry 4 people and are 1 kilometer long.
Lift 1 AKA: slow poke is a an old school 420volt continuous lift and
Lift 2 AKA: Fast and Furrious is a new school detachable 420volt analogous lift

Both lifts have 200 chairs (100 on up side, 100 on down side) thats a total of 400 people riding uphill on the lift max. Spaced at approx 10 meters each chair (thats 33 feet aprox or about 6 seconds appart)

Lift 1 runs at a constant speed of 75 meters a minute or 13.3 minutes to top
Lift 2 runs at a constant of 125 meters a minute or 8 minutes to top.

therfore lift 1 deposits 400 people at the top every 13.3 minutes or 1804.5 people every hour
lift 2 deposits 400 people at the to every 8 minutes or 3000 people evrey hour.

So yes a high speed lift does get you up on the hill faster, because it runs faster. Costing about the same for enery on both lifts it decreases costs associated with lift opperation and the end result is more people on the hill.

High speed is great, but low speed is good for tralking with bros, wife, etc in an environment that is free. It also lets you snmoke one with your hommie while his little brother the cheba hawk is behind you on the next chair.


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## BillyD (Oct 10, 2003)

Rhm hit the nail on the head. Brendodendo your calcs are wrong in that fixed grips have more chairs. Both pick people up at 6 second intervals. High speeds get you up the hill faster after you get on the lift, but have the same uphill capacity. Less waiting in line and more chair time on the fixed grip. I have seen this discussed at length before. The only way to get more people up the hill is more seats. Double versus quad or six pack.


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## KSC (Oct 22, 2003)

rhm, I think I see your point.

Say cars are driving down a 1000m stretch of road and you have to maintain a 1 second distance between cars. 

In one lane all cars are going 100m/s, then the gap between each car would be 100m.
In another lane, all cars are going 10m/s, then the gap between each car would need to be 10m.

So at 100 m/s you can fit 10 cars on the stretch of road at any given time
At 10m/s you can fit 100 cars on the stretch of road at any given time.

If I'm the first car to enter the queue in:
case 1 (100m/s) I will finish in 10 seconds
case 2 (10m/s) I will finish in 100 seconds

But after this 100 second period, presumably a guy sitting at the finish line will see a car in the 100m/s lane and a 10m/s lane cross the line every second. The guy sitting at the start line will see a person going onto the road every second. Clearly the person in the the 100m/s will get to the finish line much faster than a person in the 10m/s lane.

So really the slowness of the 10m/s lane comes into play loading and unloading the queue.

In other words, suppose we allow cars on this 1000m stretch of road for 1000 seconds. In the first 100 seconds 0 cars have finished in the slow lane, but 10 cars have finished in the fast lane. For the next 800 seconds, a car in each lane finishes every second. But if want all cars off the road at the end of the 1000 seconds (the accurate ski analogy), you must stop allowing cars into the slow lane at the 900 second mark, but you can continue to allow cars into the fast lane until the 990 second mark .

How about that? That's all I've got time for at the moment, but I'm thinking the whole slower speed in the loading/unloading zone may play a factor as well.


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## rhm (May 16, 2006)

ksc i like your analogy of the road. this is exactly like the lift. as you can actually see a high speed moves a few more people at the beginning of its cycle and at the end of its cycle, but while both are running they move the same number of people up the hill in a given period of time.


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## boatnbike (Aug 11, 2006)

It was my understanding there would be no math on this forum.


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## Andy H. (Oct 13, 2003)

This thread is amazing....

Please, please, oh my God, please, read this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chairlift


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## BillyD (Oct 10, 2003)

I know, kind of a useless thread, but I can't help myself to point out that your link, Andy, contradicts your original statement. As the wikapedia link says a high speed quad moves twice as many people an hour over an old fixed grip double. Not 4 to 5 as many. Its all about seating capacity. Here's another discussion to bore everyone that might still be interested. http://www.alpinezone.com/forums/6922-hs-detachable-vs-fixed-grip-3-print.html

Anyone have any TR's or pics of the snow in their area?


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## KSC (Oct 22, 2003)

Great, so we agree, and Andy H gets to shove his sardonic comments up his ass based on his own reference. Sounds like a win win.


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## gapers (Feb 14, 2004)

boatnbike said:


> It was my understanding there would be no math on this forum.


Ya literally took the words right out of my mouth.


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