Question of the Day - 04 September 2025

Second question first. Yes, escalators are over 100 years old, 130 to be exact. Jesse Reno, an American inventor and engineer (not to be confused with the General Jesse Reno, whom Reno, Nevada, is named after), built a working prototype of what he called an "inclined elevator in 1895 and installed the first escalator at Coney Island a year later. In 1897, Charles Seeberger, another American inventor, redesigned the escalator and partnered with the Otis Elevator Company, which produced the first commercial escalator in 1899 at the Otis factory in Yonkers, New York. Seeberger's escalator won first prize at the Paris Exposition in 1900 and the rest is moving-staircase history. 

First question, which is submitted to us fairly frequently. The answer is, it's not so much the age of the technology as it is the numerous challenges that bedevil the Strip escalators and elevators.  

Two dozen elevators and four dozen escalators ferry walkers and those in wheelchairs and mobility scooters on and off the pedestrian overpasses that traverse the Las Vegas Strip. Maintaining upwards of 70 conveyances is a big job under any circumstances, but the circumstances on the Strip are often extenuating.

To begin with, they’re outside, so they’re susceptible to weather conditions, as well as debris and detritus, rubble and rubbish, that often accumulate in the guts of the machines. And yes, that's true even in summer when there's no rain, though there often is during the monsoon season.

Second, they get almost continuous use, so breakdowns aren’t uncommon, nor is vandalism. In addition, failsafe sensors, switches, and mechanisms disable the conveyances if they’re abused in any way, which they are, anywhere between occasionally and often. 

And third, most are serviced by the county (not the city), which has a lot of other maintenance issues to deal with. Clark County encompasses 8,000 square miles, making it larger than six U.S. states (slightly larger than Massachusetts).

Still, the county has a rigorous schedule for keeping the conveyances running: Routine maintenance on all elevators and escalators under county jurisdiction is scheduled once a month and extensive cleaning, repair, and refurbishing happens once a year. In the meantime, on-call repair crews are dispatched regularly to get broken-down machines up and running again.

All that adds up to at least one escalator and/or elevator being unusable at any given time on the Strip -- and often many more. But if it’s any consolation, the county says it tries very hard not to have an elevator paired with an escalator both down at the same time. It might not help mobility-challenged people if the elevator is down and not the escalator, but that’s the price some folks have to pay for the convenience of pedestrian walkways over the Strip.