Traction elevators are the most common type of vertical lifts used in buildings. The cab is lifted by cables along a trackway (with or without gears), and its weight is counterbalanced by a counterweight that moves in the opposite direction.

Because the cab and counterweight are nearly equal in weight (usually the counterweight exceeds the cab by roughly half of the allowed passenger or freight capacity), the role of the cables is not to lift dead weight so much as to overcome forces of traction built into the cab/counterweight system.

Traction elevators use far less energy than hydraulic elevators, and are common in tall buildings as well as low-rises and other structural types. They are the standard system for any kind of building with heavy traffic.