This one started with a podcast.
We were listening to an episode about why American elevators cost roughly three times what they do in Europe, featuring Stephen Smith of the Center for Building in North America. Smith's report on elevators, and his New York Times essay arguing that the American elevator explains why housing costs have skyrocketed, are the most thorough work anyone has done on this oddly specific problem. They are cited throughout this piece because they earned it. What follows is our attempt to take that national argument and ask a Nevada question: what could the state actually do, and when. Listen to the episode.
Start with the number that makes the case. A basic four-stop elevator runs about $158,000 in New York. The same machine costs about $36,000 in Switzerland.
That is not a typo, and it is not a fluke of one city. A six-stop model costs more than three times as much in Pennsylvania as it does in Belgium. Across the board, elevators in the United States and Canada cost roughly three times what they cost in Western Europe, Switzerland, or South Korea, for the same equipment from the same global manufacturers. The result is predictable: the United States has fewer elevators per capita than any other high-income country. When an elevator is this expensive, developers stop building the mid-rise apartment buildings that need one and default to townhouses and walk-ups instead. That is a housing problem hiding inside a building code.
Three reasons it costs so much
The first is cabin size. American code requires unusually large elevator cabs, roughly twice the size of a standard European car, a requirement that traces back to a single line in the 1988 Uniform Building Code meant to fit an ambulance stretcher fully reclined. European elevators carry stretchers too. They just do it without doubling the size of every cab in the country.
The second is standards. North America never harmonized with the European EN 81 family of elevator codes, now folded into the global ISO 8100 standard. Because our market sits outside that system, parts often need separate North American certification, and manufacturers simply do not bother certifying their cheaper, globally standard models for a small and isolated market. We pay more for less choice.
The third is a pile of smaller code items that add up. American elevators cannot share a shaft with a stairway, which is common and allowed abroad. The United States is the only country that will not accept elevator landing doors as adequate to prevent smoke spread in a basic building, so we add expensive smoke curtains. None of this makes the elevator meaningfully safer. It just makes it cost more.
"When an elevator costs three times what it should, the building that needed it often does not get built at all."
What this means for Nevada
Nevada has no elevator-code reform on the books. The state adopts elevator standards by reference, including ASME A17.1 through the Nevada Administrative Code, and the oversized-cabin requirement rides along inside the building code that local jurisdictions adopt. Northern Nevada developers feel the cost directly. On a representative five-story, twenty-four-unit Midtown Reno building, the elevator alone runs somewhere between $53,000 and $153,000 installed, and the reform-eligible savings (a smaller cab and hoistway, eliminated smoke curtains, simplified communication devices) come to roughly $50,000 to $80,000 per project. That is real money on exactly the kind of attainable mid-rise the state says it wants.
There is a working model to copy. In 2026 Washington signed elevator reform into law (Chapter 145, 2026 Laws), allowing elevators about seventeen percent smaller in buildings up to six stories and twenty-four units, and standing up a technical advisory group to settle the details on hoistway protection and two-way communication. It passed with the fire service and the elevator trade at the table, not shut out. Nevada can do the same.
The cleanest path forward combines two tracks. The elevator safety mechanics, including recognition of globally standard ISO 8100 equipment, can likely move through the administrative code process that already governs Nevada elevators. The cabin-size change lives in the building code and is best carried in legislation, paired with the technical advisory group that brings the International Union of Elevator Constructors and the fire service into the design. The target is the 2027 legislative session, and the work of drafting, recruiting a sponsor, and building that coalition starts now.
This article draws on "Elevators," the May 2024 report from Stephen Smith and the Center for Building in North America, and on Washington's SB 5156. Cost figures for Nevada are defensible estimates assembled from that work, not an audited project pro forma. See our Build Up, Nevada page for the combined plan, including single-stair reform.