In this article, we study the observability (or, equivalently, the controllability) of some subelliptic evolution equations depending on their step. This sheds light on the speed of propagation of these equations, notably in the ``degenerated directions'' of the subelliptic structure. First, for any $\gamma\geq 1$, we establish a resolvent estimate for the Baouendi-Grushin-type operator $\Delta_\gamma=\partial_x^2+|x|^{2\gamma}\partial_y^2$, which has step $\gamma+1$. We then derive consequences for the observability of the Schr\"odinger type equation $i\partial_tu-(-\Delta_\gamma)^{s}u=0$ where $s\in N$. We identify three different cases: depending on the value of the ratio $(\gamma+1)/s$, observability may hold in arbitrarily small time, or only for sufficiently large times, or even fail for any time. As a corollary of our resolvent estimate, we also obtain observability for heat-type equations $\partial_tu+(-\Delta_\gamma)^su=0$ and establish a decay rate for the damped wave equation associated with $\Delta_{\gamma}$.