Things They Should Invent: express elevators for the pandemic

Most people in my building seem to be voluntarily abiding by a one person/household per elevator rule. I do this myself. I live in the lower half of the building, so often when I'm waiting for an elevator to take me to to the ground floor, there will already be someone in it. I cheerfully wave them on, and wait for the next elevator.

However, not everyone in my building does this. Sometimes I'm taking the elevator down, it stops to pick up someone who has pressed the call button on one of the floors below me, and they get in. And there's not really much I can civilly do to stop them. (I mean, I could scream and argue, or do something gross like cough or something creepy like scratch my ass and smell my finger, but I have few options that allow me to retain what social capital I have.)

I also think, in some cases, the person waiting for the elevator might feel it's rude not to get into the elevator, as though you're suggesting that there's something wrong with the person in the elevator. (Imagine, for example, how declining to get in an elevator with someone else would have read before anyone had ever heard of the coronavirus.)

It would be useful if, for the duration of the pandemic, elevators could be put in express mode. You get in the elevator, press the button for your floor, and it goes straight to your floor without stopping. Then it goes and picks up the next person who has pressed a call button.

This would make elevator use during the pandemic as safe as possible without requiring optimal behaviour or any sort of effort from users. In my own experiences with skipping over occupied elevators and waiting for empty ones, I've never had to wait for more than three (and, about half the time, the first elevator that arrives is empty) so I don't think it would cause undue delays.

The challenge is I'm not sure whether it's technically possible without changes to how elevators work. The elevators I'm familiar with can be put in service mode with a key - you turn the key, the elevator goes your destination floor without stopping and then waits for you there. But if you don't turn the key back to the normal setting, the elevator will sit and wait for you rather than picking up the next passenger. And if you do turn the key back to the normal setting, it will go back to stopping wherever there's a call button pressed.

So I'm not sure if elevators can currently be programmed to take each passenger to their floor then go back for the next passenger without constant intervention. But if they can, they should be. And if they can't, elevator manufacturers should figure out how to introduce this functionality for the next time we need it.