I can attest that there are quite a few multi-story buildings in Wyoming. Small towns often have impressive modern hotels of significant size. However, hotels almost never have escalators. You find escalators primarily in places like shopping malls. The hotels mostly have elevators, which are also more common in office buildings and hospitals. Wyoming has a strong tourist economy, and its Western-style tourist areas go for quaint/rustic styles, for which escalators are inappropriate.
Any multistory building in WY would have elevators. Escalators are typically in two story malls or airports in my maybe limited experience. The airports are small and other than the two with escalators, the malls are too. Space isn’t at a premium there so you can just build out instead of up if you need more space.
When I was a lad, I got on the escalator at the Lloyd Center Woolworths and, upon ceaching the top, it commenced to eat the toe of one of my brand new shoes. My good fortune lay in the great width of my feet, which usually forces me to get shoes that are two to three sizes too large, so my flesh toes were never really in any danger.
They used to have wooden escalators at the Harvard Square stop on the Red Line in Boston, before they undertook a major renovation and rebuilt the whole thing from the underground up.
It’s true, but it’s just hard for me to accept. That’s the best way to put it. I googled, AI, told AI it was full of shit, AI doubled down, and read a very legit story in The Atlantic - it’s true. And still…it doesn’t feel possible to essentially not have escalators. Not even the airports which was my failsafe for thinking it was BS. But I guess they are just not necessary.
re: wooden escalators. I think the Macy’s in NYC still has wooden escalators; or they did about a decade ago when I rode them. It was neat but essentially no different.
They are big fire hazard I understand, the combination of grease and wood makes them a disaster waiting to happen.
There’s one in the Buenos Aires metro, I don’t remember the station right now, it shouldn’t be there because they are forbidden by law but…
Yeah, subways are the other big place where you see escalators, but again, not something you’d find in Wyoming. And the airports in Wyoming are all very small.
Which is strange, because I just flew in and out of a small airport (Roanoke, VA) and they had small (maybe a dozen steps?) escalators because the terminal was raised so that air bridges could be used with the larger regional jets. I would think with the winter weather in Wyoming, they’d want to use airbridges as much as possible, but when I go to the airport site, the seem to load and unload passengers on the tarmac.
That is what I wanted to refer to, but! paternoster elevator
they are so safe! There are several in Berlin, and I have ridden at least half of them. Cool things, they are. It takes some faith to go around the first time, but it works. When you do it once, you believe it works. Weird feeling, but worth a try.
