How much would you pay to use an elevator?

A thought just occurred to me as I was taking the elevator up from the cafeteria. The door opened and nobody stepped in on a floor, and I thought that was such a waste of energy to stop and restart the elevator. I then wondered what kind of punitive mechanism could be setup to avoid such blatant waste of resources. Then I hit upon the current idea:

1) To request an elevator to stop at your floor, you must indicate which floor you wish to stop at (helpful for efficient movement of elevators) and not simply direction of travel, e.g. up/down, and pay a fee calculated in various methods (more details below).
2) As an alternative, stairs will always be available and remain free
3) Discounts/waivers can be given for physically impaired, i.e. handicapped, people
4) A display at every level indicating whether the elevator plans to stop and where it will stop. This way, you can ride for free if someone else has already paid, i.e. it's not a per-person fee, but rather a per-stop fee. This display/device should be integrated with the payment system to reduce cost of implementation.

Many variations on this common theme, but imagine the following setup:
1) At every floor is a computer-like device with a card reader. Swipe your card and select destination floor. A deduction is then made in your account (see rate table later) and an indication will appear that an elevator will stop on this floor and will then stop on your desired floor. If someone else has already paid for the elevator to stop on this floor and your desired (target) floor, then no deduction is made (it's free).
2) Rate table: A point system can be setup such that traveling one floor up or down is much more expensive that traveling multiple floors, and can even be devised to charge more for going down (encourages more people to take stairs at least down where it's not terribly physically demanding) versus up. A sample system might be: 10 points for going down 1 floor, 15 points for 2 floors, and 2 points for each additional floor, i.e. 3 floors would cost 17 points. Going up would be discounted by 1 point per floor, so 9 points for up 1 floor, 13 points for up 2 floors, and 14 points for 3 floors up.

Now, those with offices on the higher floors may cry foul because they are penalized for their office location. To that, I say - take the stairs, they're free! But if people really object, then provisions can be made such that they get an allowance of points as a function of their office location, e.g. those with offices on 15th floor (typical cost from 1st floor going up would be 25 points and going down would be 36 points so 2 round-trips would cost 121 points - good for coming in, out and back for lunch, and leaving) could get an allowance of 121 points per day.

One can also see that the rate structure can become very creative, including caps such that say, rides going up more than 8 floors or down more than 10 would be entirely free - it's reasonable use of the elevator at that point, I think. Or, you can have a reverse rate structure such that the going down 1 floor costs 10 points, 2 floors 9 points, etc. and then more than 10 floors you'd get for free. This type of rate structure is more conducive to encouraging people to walk rather than reflecting true energy/utility costs.

Of course - the final points-to-dollars conversion would have to be specified - not sure how much people are willing to pay in terms of dollars. And for the really lazy folks, you can always mimic the subway and offer "unlimited rides" for a high cost, but this would run counter to the idea of getting people to take the stairs.

The income derived from such an operation should be sufficient to pay off the initial investment, and then provide for continued maintenance of the elevator. Furthermore, as I indicated earlier, the relocation of the control panels from within the elevator to each floor immensely aids in the planning of the efficient movement of multiple elevators. Such a system has already been implemented in certain hotels (not fee-for-use, but people indicate which floor they desire and the screen directs them to a particular elevator to use). Once on the elevator, there are no buttons to push and the elevator will stop at the requested floor(s).

An interesting social experiment comes from this, too. Since you are paying per-stop and not per-person, it would be interesting to see a) who is willing to pay for a large group, and b) at what point will people simply take the stairs as opposed to pay for a group...

I would love to see this implemented somewhere..maybe someone else already has this idea?