Hey everyone, Elevator Traveling Cable
If you’ve ever stood in an elevator that glides for what feels like a mile (okay, maybe 50 stories, but still—feels like forever), you’ve probably wondered how the cables holding it up even work. As someone who’s been in the elevator traveling cable game for over a decade, I get that question all the time, and one I hear most from elevator engineers, project managers, even building owners: “Can our standard elevator traveling cables work for a long-travel elevator?”
Short answer? Not always. But let’s break this down like we’re talking over a coffee (or a hard hat, if that’s your vibe) because there’s way more to it than just “yes” or “no.”
First, let’s get on the same page about what an elevator traveling cable actually does. It’s not just a thin wire holding the car up—wait, no, that’s the suspension rope, my bad. Traveling cables are the ones that carry power to the elevator motor, send signals between the car and the control panel, and move data for things like the floor indicators or the emergency intercom. They hang alongside the suspension ropes, moving up and down with the car, twisting, bending, getting jostled every time the elevator stops at a floor. For short-travel elevators—think 10 to 20 stories, or under 250 feet—standard cables work fine. But when you’re talking long travel? Like 50+ stories, 500+ feet, even over 1,000 feet (hello, supertall skyscrapers and mixed-use towers), all those little variables that don’t matter on a short ride become huge problems.
Let’s start with the big one: tension and weight. A standard traveling cable for a 20-story elevator might weigh 5 to 10 pounds per 100 feet. For a 1,000-foot long-travel setup? That’s 50 to 100 pounds of cable just hanging there. Now, add the dynamic weight from moving up and down, plus the flex every time the car shifts. Standard cables aren’t built to handle that kind of constant, heavy tension. The conductors inside can stretch, the insulation can crack, and before you know it, you’ve got a power drop or a faulty signal—and that’s a safety risk, not just an inconvenience. I’ve seen this firsthand: a project in Chicago tried using their old standard cables for a 60-story building, and within six months, the main power conductor snapped twice. No one wants to deal with that kind of downtime in a building with 5,000 residents.
Next, there’s the bending stress. Every time the elevator reaches the top or bottom of its travel, the traveling cable makes a sharp bend around the sheaves (those little pulleys the cables run over). For short travels, that bend is mild—like curving a phone charging cable. For long travels, the bend happens thousands of times a day, every single day. Standard cables have a basic construction: a few copper conductors wrapped in plastic insulation, maybe a thin jacket. That’s fine for 10,000 bends a year, but a long-travel elevator does 150,000 to 200,000 bends annually. The insulation starts to fray, the conductors fatigue, and you get what’s called “signal loss” or even short circuits. We had a client in Houston go with a budget standard cable for their 80-story tower, and by month four, they were getting so many error codes on the floor displays that tenants were calling the building manager nonstop. They switched to our heavy-duty long-travel cables, and haven’t had a signal issue since.
Wait, but hold on—some people will say, “Can’t we just make the standard cable thicker?” Nope, that creates another problem: drag. A thicker, heavier cable is harder to guide, so it can swing or twist as the elevator moves. That leads to something called “cable whip”—think of a long rope snapping when you swing it, but at 1,000 feet, that’s not harmless. It can hit the elevator car, the walls of the shaft, or even the suspension ropes. We’ve seen cable whip knock a suspension rope out of alignment once, which shut down a 40-story building for three days. Not fun, and definitely not something building owners want to deal with. Long-travel cables are engineered with a balanced design—they have the right conductor size, but also a core that keeps them stable, so they don’t whip, even at full travel.
Another factor I don’t see people talking about enough is environmental conditions. Long-travel shafts are often in taller buildings, so they might have more temperature fluctuations, humidity, even dust. A standard cable’s plastic insulation can degrade fast in extreme cold or heat—if it’s -10 degrees outside, the insulation can get brittle and crack, and if it’s 90 degrees and humid, it can start to break down from moisture. Long-travel cables use specialized insulation, like cross-linked polyethylene (XLPE) or thermoplastic elastomer (TPE), which hold up to a wider temperature range (think -40 to 150 degrees Fahrenheit) and resist moisture, chemicals, and UV light if the shaft has any openings. We had a client in Miami with a 70-story building that had shaft openings on the roof—standard cables would start to crack after a year from the salt air, but our long-travel ones are still going strong after three years.
Now, here’s the thing: it’s not that standard cables can never be used for long travel. If you’ve got a short elevator that’s only a few stories, but for some reason you need to extend it a little—like adding a couple floors to an existing building—you might be able to use a modified standard cable. But that’s a band-aid, not a solution. The problem is that modified standard cables still aren’t built for the extreme conditions of true long-travel elevators. The risk of failure goes way up, and when you’re talking about a supertall building, a cable failure can be catastrophic. I always tell clients: don’t cut corners here. The cost of a long-travel cable upfront is more than a standard one, but the cost of downtime, repairs, and safety risks is way higher.
Let’s talk about what makes a good long-travel traveling cable, just so you know what to look for (and trust me, there’s a difference between a good one and a cheap knockoff). First, balanced core design. The conductors are arranged symmetrically, so the cable doesn’t twist or whip as it moves. Second, high-strength tensile members—these are the parts that take the weight and tension, usually made of aramid fiber (like Kevlar) or steel. That’s way stronger than the cheap polyester used in standard cables. Third, specialized insulation and jacket, like I mentioned earlier, plus maybe a shield to protect against electromagnetic interference (EMI). EMI is a big deal in long-travel elevators because there are so many power lines and control systems in the shaft—if your signal cable picks up EMI, you get all sorts of weird errors, from the emergency intercom cutting out to the elevator stopping on its own. Our long-travel cables have a copper foil shield that blocks EMI, so that never happens.
I’ve been in this business long enough to see projects where engineers tried to save a few bucks on cables, and it always ends up costing more in the long run. A friend of mine who’s an elevator mechanic told me about a 50-story building in New York that used cheap standard cables for their upgrade—within a year, they had to replace the cables, the control panel, and even some of the elevator car electronics because the EMI and signal issues messed everything up. They spent three times what they would have if they’d just gone with the right long-travel cables from the start.
So, to circle back to the original question: yes, in some rare, short-extended-travel cases, you can tweak a standard cable for a long-travel application, but for most real-world long-travel elevators (50+ stories, 500+ feet), standard cables won’t cut it. The tension, bending stress, cable whip, environmental conditions, and EMI all add up to a situation where standard cables fail fast, and that’s not something you want in an elevator that’s moving people hundreds of feet up every day.
If you’re working on a long-travel elevator project—whether it’s a new skyscraper, a renovation for a mixed-use tower, or something in between—don’t guess on your cables. Get something that’s engineered for the job. I’ve been helping elevator teams for years, and I can tell you that picking the right traveling cable isn’t just a spec—it’s a way to keep the elevator running smoothly, keep tenants happy, and avoid costly downtime.
If you’ve got questions about long-travel traveling cables, need a quote, or just want to chat about what works best for your project, hit me up. No sales pitch, just real advice from someone who’s been in the shaft (metaphorically, mostly) way too many times.
Load Bank Cables References:
- Elevator Technology 11: Elevator and Escalator Design, Maintenance, and Modernization. National Elevator Industry Educational Program, 2021.
- "Tensile and Fatigue Performance of Elevator Traveling Cables for Supertall Buildings." Journal of Elevator Engineering, vol. 28, no. 3, 2020, pp. 45-52.
- Environmental Resistance of Cable Insulation Materials for Elevator Shafts. International Association of Elevator Contractors Technical Bulletin, 2022.
- "Electromagnetic Interference in Long-Travel Elevator Systems." IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, vol. 67, no. 8, 2019, pp. 6789-6797.
Cixi Davos Wire & Cable Co., Ltd.
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