Back in 2008 I commented on the awesome floor numbering system in an Israeli elevator, where ground level was the 0th floor, and underground floors got negative numbers. Well, when visiting a doctor to follow up from my gallbladder adventures, I saw this elevator:
This is the first time I've seen this numbering system in the US. While it's not as cool as the 0th floor in that they use L (presumably for "Lobby" even though there wasn't one), their underground floors got negative signs!
I think sometimes (though evidently not always) in Israel the floor numbers go ..., 3, 2, 1, A, B, C, ... I mostly remember seeing that sequence in buildings on steep hills, in which the "ground level" on one side of the building was not the ground level on the other side (e.g., almost every building in Har nof). It kind of made sense, since -1 implies more that it's underground, whereas A or B have less of that connotation, so it's less weird that they would be the ground floor on the other side.
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