  We present and analyze a minimalist model for the vertical transport of
people in a tall building by elevators. We focus on start-of-day operation in
which people arrive at the ground floor of the building at a fixed rate. When
an elevator arrives on the ground floor, passengers enter until the elevator
capacity is reached, and then they are transported to their destination floors.
We determine the distribution of times that each person waits until an elevator
arrives, the number of people waiting for elevators, and transition to
synchrony for multiple elevators when the arrival rate of people is
sufficiently large. We validate many of our predictions by event-driven
simulations.
