I tried one back when the UK still had them.

They are fun - so fun I went up and down a few times. (It was late, and the building was almost empty.)

They feel reliable. You hop on, you go up/down, you hop off.

You don't wait to see if the button you pushed actually did something, you don't try to find a place in a small herd of anxious people with decreased personal space, none of whom are talking, you don't get claustrophobia or any other phobia, and the jump on/off experience adds a frisson of excitement to your day.

And it's hard to get trapped in one. (Not impossible. But certainly hard.)

I suppose contact/proximity sensors at the limb/head-chopping edges would add to the cost, but conventional elevators are hardly 100% safe, so I don't really see the rationale for killing them off.

There still is one in the Attenborough Tower at the University of Leicester! Great fun, but it has CCTV and they call you out via speaker if it becomes obvious that you're just messing about.

There still seems to be one at Sheffield University

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arts_Tower

Glad to see someone posted this! I was a student at Sheffield and did ride this one a couple of times. I was always skeptical about the safety but have never heard of any accidents happening.

What I found most amusing is that you pass through a floor with full view of the people waiting, and so there's plenty of opportunity for awkward eye contact.

Re: vandalism

The building had no access controls at all. I walked into an unattended lobby and rode up and down for a while. I saw no evidence of vandalism.