> minimize the amount of wait times between picking up people and taking them to their destination

I wish elevators accounted for load.

I've been to a couple of larger conferences where on the Monday morning after, the hotel elevator was just hammered. Everyone wanted to go down, and the elevator would dutifully stop on every single floor no matter how full it was. If you were mobility disabled on the 2nd floor, you were basically fucked if you had a flight to catch.

One would think that, if it's a 10 person elevator and it's already stopped on 10 floors requesting it, that it could save an extra 5 minutes by just going directly to the ground floor, instead of stopping on every floor with the same conversation of "Oof, can't fit in there. I'll get the next one!"

I have done several third-party elevator integrations (software that talks to the elevator controller) for coordinating other equipment with the elevator. One thing that always struck me once I had full visibility into the location and motion of all the elevator cabs is how busily they are scheduled. Waiting in the elevator lobby for a cab seems to take forever, but viewed from the dispatch side, it is a flurry of activity and cabs are rarely idle during any hours the building is normally occupied. It is easy to nerd out just watching the status panel.

Another thing I learned: If an elevator mechanic says: "I'll meet you first thing in the morning." He means something like 4:00AM. They want to get in and out before people start arriving to start their day.

One other thing to add: It isn't the elevator scheduling software being obtuse, that software gets a huge amount of thought. But elevators are expensive, and building owners do not over-spend on a whim. Typically, they have just enough cabs (if that) to handle the expected load.

They might have other objective functions like wear-and-tear on the elevators, total energy usage, or something