I've noticed in my mine how excruciatingly long it takes to get up from the bottom using boring old vanilla ladders...
So how about electric ladders?
Crafting recipe:
STS
SBS = Four electric ladders
SES
Where S = Stick, T = tin, B = battery and E = electric circuit
Not sure if this is right...
Anyway, the ladders should function normally unless one ladder block in a long ladder is powered by a cable or MFE or whatever, in which case the whole ladder is powered (not unlike powered rails, but with no limit, or a much longer limit) and the ladder is much, much faster. I was thinking that 1 EU should be drained per segment of ladder, for every time you climb it. It shouldn't drain EU to go down, really. The ladder can maybe be a grey/silver reskin, or something completely different.
Let me know what you think