Near my apartment is a building site with a tower crane; great fun to watch of course. This crane seems to have a lift / elevator / vertical-people-transporter (arrowed in the picture).
As far as I can see the lift is only used four times a day (morning-lunch(2x)-afternoon) which is no doubt very nice for the operator but this can hardly be cost-effective. I have seen the operator climb between the operator's cabin and the lift but never any other movement.
Probably there is some other reason for the lift, so what is it? Also, why doesn't the lift go higher? Currently the operator has to climb about 20m, I see no reason why the lift couldn't go 10m higher (the next floor).
PS Tagging was tricky and I don't have the rep to make a "crane" tag. Advice?
EDIT: In response to comments that it might be a climbing crane, added hi-res photos with lift down. There's also a photo with lift up on i.stack.imgur.com/yT6bn.jpg; I don't have the rep to add a link to it.