Victoria Peak Hong Kong in 2048 + the 100 million visitors a year question
Can Victoria Peak Hong Kong handle 100 million visitors a year - what the future holds
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A look into the future - what to expect at Victoria Peak Hong Kong in 2048
A long time resident looks at queues, views, drones, cable cars and Plan B, C and D
Foreword by Jamie
This is not a nod to the Blade Runner 2049 movie (except it is!) I have been thinking about this subject for a long time and the idea then popped up when I came across Hong Kong Official Government Statistics about visitor arrivals to Hong Kong from 1966 to 1997 and that got me thinking, my pet subject is Victoria Peak so I then thought, what is Hong Kong going to be like in 2048 and how on earth will the Peak Tram and Peak Tower cope if visitor arrivals continue to expand exponentially
I wrote the 16 myths piece because Victoria Peak collects more nonsense than any other place in Hong Kong. I have been going up there since 3rd January 1972, the day after we, as a family landed, and I have been back more than 6,000 times. The myths have not changed much. The numbers around them have. This piece is the awkward twin of that one. Instead of looking backwards at what people get wrong in 2026, I am looking forwards to 2048 and asking a simpler question. If Hong Kong is still here, if tourism is still a pillar, and if the authorities keep chasing volume towards that mythical 100 million visitors a year, what actually happens at Victoria Peak.
I am not starting from a blank page. We already had a dress rehearsal. In 2018 Hong Kong took about 65.1 million visitors, the highest figure on record, and Victoria Peak was chaos on most days. That year is the proper warning label for everything that follows. I am not a prophet. I do not have a crystal ball and I do not work for the Peak Tramways Company, the Peak Tower operator, the Tourism Commission or the Transport Department. I do have 54 years of watching how this city treats a bottleneck. Victoria Peak is a bottleneck with a view. The Peak Tram is a single funicular railway on a 1,278 metre track. Peak Road is two lanes. The Peak Tower is one building. None of those three facts is going to dissolve because a minister wants a round number. So this is speculation grounded in what is already true, plus a few thoughts from left field. Take it as a resident thinking out loud, not as a masterplan. It is not Blade Runner 2049. There are no flying cars in this version. There is a queue, a cable pulling a tram and a building that already has floors it refuses to use as a station waiting area
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The Iconic Peak Tram and Peak Tower in Hong Kong
Why 2048 is a useful date and not a party trick
2048 is 22 years from now. That is long enough for a generation of rolling stock, two or three rounds of operating rights, one major renovation of the Peak Tower, and several tourism blueprints that will be announced, praised, and then quietly filed. It is also short enough that most of the physical plant we see today will still be standing. Buildings in Hong Kong last. The Peak Tower opened in 1997 in its present form, after the earlier tower of 1972. It is an awkward, photogenic bowl on legs and it earns rent. Nobody is going to knock it down for the sake of a brochure. Changing how the inside is used is another conversation.
The Peak Tram is older still. Service began on 30th May 1888. The present sixth generation cars, the green ones, arrived after the 2022 upgrade. They carry 210 people, 167 seated and 43 standing. The lower Garden Road terminus can now hold about 1,300 people under cover. The upper platform inside the Peak Tower still holds something closer to 100 or 120 before the queue spills outside. That mismatch is not a rumour. It is geometry. Geometry does not care about 2048.
I have been riding the Peak Tram since January 3rd 1972, so many thousands of time and basically it was sheer joy to ride on the tram up until about 1999 - there might have been only 10 - 20 people on tram, no lines, no unruly mobs, it was a lovely way to get to Victoria Peak and yes, it was priced at public transport prices, when you have been using the Peak Tram for 54 years you form an attachment and you cannot help but feel a yearning for the good old days but it is not only that, I feel for the tourists who come to Hong Kong and for many a ride on the Peak Tram to Victoria Peak is a real highlight and goodness knows what they think about having to wait for an hour to get on the tram and heaven forbid have to stand for the ride up to the Peak
This is why I always recommend you go to Victoria Peak by bus or taxi and come down on the Peak Tram, I have my own method of getting the only 2 seats on the tram that have an unobstructed view going down and I have a 100% success rate and the joy on my guests faces is what makes it all worthwhile and then I think about all the people that have to stand in long queues and get physically manhandled by unruly tourists trying to get the best seats, mosh pit is the right phrase
I do (and in the interests of offering a balanced view) feel a tinge of sympathy for the Peak Tram Company, they do try very hard to encourage people to go up on the tram as early as possible ie between 8am and 9am but human nature kicks in, tourists are not going to wake up too early and skip breakfast just to get the first trams, I for one do not follow my advice, I only ever go up by bus (my number 1 choice) which I am on by about 10.30am and then make sure we go down before 2pm, this fits with timing when you are doing a private tour.
It works for me.
The 10 year right, the missing bids, and whether the Peak Tower is on the same deal
The Peak Tram operating right is not a birth certificate from 1888. It is a grant from the Chief Executive in Council, for not more than 10 years at a time. Peak Tramways Company Limited, inside the Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels group, has it through to 31st December 2035. After that the same holder can be given it again. They can also not be. There is no clause that says the tram runs forever because the first tram ran on 30th May 1888.
Could the government refuse to renew if arrivals ramp up and the complaints get loud. Yes. China Motor Bus in Hong Kong in the 1990’s is the precedent people reach for, and the street version of that story still matters. The view among Hong Konger’s was not that CMB simply grew old. It was that the company became more interested in a property empire than in buses. Depots sat on land that was worth more as buildings than as garages. New air conditioned buses were slow to arrive. Infrastructure was allowed to look tired on purpose. By the time the government said most of the Hong Kong Island routes would not come back, a lot of passengers had already decided the firm had one eye on the timetable and the other on the land bank. On 1st September 1998 Citybus took over. CMB, in the years after, looked a lot more like a property company than a bus company, which is what people had been saying all along and Citybus who took over it a fantastic company, I am on their buses most days.
That is why the comparison is useful and why it only goes so far. CMB could be pushed because another operator could roll buses onto the same roads the next morning. The Peak Tram cannot. There is no second funicular railway sitting in a depot in Chai Wan. The garage is the Peak Tower, and the Peak Tower belongs to the people who already run the Peak Tram.
It is one track, 1,278 metres, specialist cars, a passing loop, a haulage plant under the upper station, and two termini that do not sit on a government bus park. The lower station lives in St John’s Building on Garden Road which is also owned by HSH - The upper station lives inside the Peak Tower (owned by HSH). Both buildings sit in the Hong Kong and Shangahai Hotel Group world. The tram is a franchise on government land. The Peak Tower is a private commercial building on a Commercial (2) site, 11,021 square metres, capped at 430 metres above Principal Datum. (and yes I do know what that means, I looked it up) Joined at the hip is not a metaphor. It is the floor plan.
HSH = The Hong Kong and Shanghai Hotels Group or The Peninsula Hotel Group
That is why the awful versions write themselves. Notice in 2032 that the right dies on 31st December 2035, and no successor ready: the cars stop and Peak Road inherits everyone an total chaos ensutes. A new operator named while HSH still owns the Peak Tower: a railway with no station, three years of letters about access and rent, visitors in the rain. Government takes the tram and leaves HSH the tower: two brands, two queues, two sets of rules. Or the threat is used as leverage, which is the version I would actually bet on. Renewal in 2035 with conditions. Indoor line. Seats on P1. Coach caps. The franchise dies in the speech and comes back with extra homework.
If HSH ever looked like CMB, meaning the tower and the land mattered more than the ride, the political weather would change. They have put money into the 2022 cars and the Garden Road revamp which was just over US$100 Million, which CMB, in the public telling, would not have done. The complaint at Victoria Peak is different. It is not that the company refused to buy new stock. It is that the new stock still empties into a shop.
in plain English, the terminus on Garden Road at the bottom can hold 1,300 people, a little unruly I might add, at the terminus at Victoria Peak, it can hold (and this is an estimate) only 100 - 120 people and then the larger part of the queue has to queue outside no matter the weather, there was simply no way to increase the holding area in the Peak Tower itself and this is why careful timing is paramount when you come down on the Peak Tram
Have there been competing bids in the last 30 years. Not in public. This right is not put out to tender like a cleaning contract. The law says the Chief Executive in Council may grant it in any manner thought fit. That can mean an auction. In practice it has meant a conversation with the company already on the track. The old right ran out at the end of 2013. There was a two year stopgap through 2015 while the ordinance was rewritten. On 1st December 2015 Peak Tramways was given 10 years from 1st January 2016. In October 2018 it was given the next 10 years as well, from 1st January 2026 to 31st December 2035, before the first decade had finished. That second grant was tied to the upgrade: 210 person cars, the Garden Road hall for about 1,300 people, more than HK$650 million of HSH money. There was no published rival bid.
I just need to clarify that the 210 capacity is not quite what it seems, at capacity 43 poor souls have to stand in the aisles and trust me that is a totally miserable experience as the tram track is steep and you get abuse from sitting passengers about blocking the views, of course as a visitor to Hong Kong it is likely you are not aware of this.
The 2015 rewrite even tilted toward the incumbent. If the holder applies for a further period and satisfies the government that it is committed to, and capable of, an upgrading plan that keeps the tram as an important tourism and recreational facility, the further period must be granted, up to another 10 years. Ten plus ten. That is why 2035 was handed over in 2018. The government did leave an escape hatch. The papers said that if terms could not be agreed for 2016, the right would go to tender. Terms were agreed. The hatch stayed shut.
Has anyone made a public offer to buy the entire operation off Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels. Not that has been announced. A buyer would not be purchasing a cable car operation with two green cars. They would be trying to buy or rent St John’s Building and the Peak Tower. The family has not put that on a sandwich board.
Which brings the question a tourism board ought to ask and usually will not. Is the Peak Tower on the same 10 year agreement as the Peak Tram?
No.
The operating right is the tramway. Track, cars, service, the land under the rails, 12% of tram revenue to the government for that land. The Peak Tower is separate property. It does not expire on 31st December 2035. Lose the tram right and you do not automatically lose the tower, the shops, Sky Terrace 428 or P1. Keep the tram right and you still need the building, because the upper terminus platform is inside it. That is the lock.
The 2015 ordinance admitted the marriage can be broken. If the right expires or is terminated and is not given back to the same company, there are powers for a mandatory lease or sale of property essential to running the tram. That clause exists because someone could see this exact mess. It has never been used. It would be a lawyers’ picnic. Until it is used, “we will not renew” is a strong sentence in a meeting and a queue at Victoria Gap in real life. The government can take the franchise. It cannot, without a fight, take the Peak Tower. The 10 year clock is on the Peak Tram. The building has its own title, its own zoning, and its own rent roll. They share a platform. They do not share a licence.
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A look into the past - Visitor Arrivals to Hong Kong 1966 - 1997
The visitor numbers that cannot be argued with
Before anyone treats 100 million as a myth, it helps to put a ruler on the years we already lived. The official visitor arrival figures from 1966 to 1997 are sitting in the table above with this piece. They are not guesses.
A few of those years matter for this story.
1966: 505,733 arrivals
1972: 1,082,253. That is the year I arrived, on 2nd January, and went up to Victoria Peak the next day
1980: 2,301,473
1988: 5,589,292. The Peak Tram’s 100th year
1996: 11,702,735, the high point of that run
1997: 10,406,261. The present Peak Tower opened in May. Arrivals fell 11.08% that year. Tourism receipts were 5.41% of GDP
So when I first stood at Victoria Gap the city was taking about 1.1 million visitors a year. When the new Peak Tower opened it was about 10.4 million. By 2018 it was 65.1 million. In 2025 it was 49.9 million. The official aim for 2026 was about 53.8 million and the figure of 100 million I have seen a few times.
The track did not get longer. Peak Road did not get wider. The upper platform inside the Peak Tower did not grow with the arrivals. That is the whole argument in digits.
100 million was an official target - I saw written into news reports such as from the SCMP
The 100 million line is not a rumour I invented for 2048. It was already on the table in 2013 and 2014. Arrivals in 2013 were 54.3 million. The Commerce and Economic Development Bureau finished an Assessment Report on Hong Kong’s Capacity to Receive Tourists that December. In January 2014 the then Secretary, Gregory So, said the city could be looking at 70 million visitors by 2017 and 100 million by 2023, mostly from the Mainland, on what the government called rather conservative assumptions. He also said Hong Kong could not and should not set a limit. The South China Morning Post ran it. So did the rest of the town. The fear at the time was the MTR. Nobody in that discussion spent much time on a 1,278 metre tram, a two lane Peak Road, or a Peak Tower platform that holds about 120 while the car now holds 210.
2023 came and went. The city took about 34 million visitors that year, after Covid had torn the forecast in half. The record was never 100 million. It was 65.1 million in 2018, and Victoria Peak was already chaos on most days. So the number in this post is not Hollywood. It is a government projection that missed its date and has not been put back in the drawer. If the authorities start talking volume again, that 2014 sentence will reappear. The geometry at Victoria Peak will not have changed in the meantime.
.It is still the number that gets muttered when people talk about volume without talking about pavements. I am using it because that is the premise of this piece, and because tourism policy in this city has a habit of falling in love with a round figure and then discovering that the round figure has to stand on a 1,278 metre track.
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Victoria Peak - February 2019, visitors in this year 55.9 million
A few more working numbers from the present, because I prefer digits.
65.1 million arrivals in 2018, the record year
49.9 million arrivals in 2025
roughly 76% from Mainland China in 2025, with the rest from everywhere else
Peak Tram ridership already in the millions a year, most of them visitors
on a busy clear day the Victoria Peak cluster already takes well over 10,000 people by tram, bus, taxi, coach and foot combined, that is simply an estimate, it could well be a lot higher
Citybus 15 and the extra X15 departures already struggle on Peak Road when the coaches arrive in a clump after lunch
Peak Road and Stubbs Road are two lanes each way. That has not changed in my lifetime and it will not change because there is no spare mountain to borrow on that side
If citywide arrivals ever approached 100 million, you do not need every visitor to go to Victoria Peak for the place to break. You only need the same share that go there now. A modest percentage of a huge number is still a huge number. We do not have to guess. We already saw a version of it in 2018. We can also see, from that 1966 to 1997 table, that the climb from half a million to 10 million took 30 years. The climb from 10 million to 65 million took another 21. The building and the tram were asked to absorb that as if they were elastic. They are not.
The 2018 warning we have already had
That year Hong Kong recorded about 65.1 million visitor arrivals, the highest figure the city has ever posted. It was not a quiet year at Victoria Peak. On most clear days, and on a good many cloudy ones, the place was already chaos.
I was going up there constantly in 2018. The Peak Tram was still the older generation, 120 people a car, and the lower terminus had not yet been rebuilt into the covered holding pen you see now. The upper platform inside the Peak Tower was the same tight squeeze it is today. Peak Road was the same two lanes. The coaches still arrived in a clump after lunch. None of that is nostalgia. It is the last hard proof we have of what Victoria Peak does when the city is genuinely busy.
A few numbers from that period, because they matter.
65.1 million arrivals citywide in 2018
Peak Tram cars then held 120 passengers, not 210
daily crowds at the Victoria Peak cluster were already running into the tens of thousands on weekends and holidays
Peak Road tailbacks of 20 to 40 coaches were not rare by mid afternoon
the Sky Terrace and the tram queues were a daily complaint from guests who had been sold a 10 minute tram ride highlight and got a 90 minute wait
So when people talk about 100 million as if it were a new problem, they are skipping the chapter we already lived. 65.1 million was enough to turn Victoria Peak into a mosh pit on most days. The 2022 upgrade bought some relief at Garden Road and put 210 people in each car. It did not add a second track, a second road, or a second Peak Tower. It just moved the crush from the ticket hall to the platform and the tram itself.
That is why 2018 is the proper baseline, not 2020 to 2023, and not even 2025’s 49.9 million. We have already seen what Victoria Peak looks like when visitor numbers are a third higher than they are now. It was not elegant. It was not premium. It was people standing in the sun, missing the view they came for, and then being packed 120 to a car that still had to climb the same 1,278 metres.
If 65.1 million produced that, the arithmetic for 80 million or 100 million is not mysterious. You can dress the queue with screens and timed tickets. You cannot pretend Victoria Peak grew extra platforms. The 1966 to 1997 table already told us the arrivals would keep rising. Nobody used those 30 years to give the top of the tram a room that matched the bottom.
What will not have changed much since 2048
The summit of Victoria Peak is 552 metres, or 1,811 feet. The public still will not stand on it. It remains a closed telecommunications site. Visitors will still be talking about Victoria Peak when they mean the cluster around Victoria Gap, the Peak Tower, the Peak Galleria, the Peak Tram upper terminus, the Lion Pavilion and the start of Lugard Road. That confusion will still be alive in 2048 because it is useful to marketing and inconvenient to correct.
The view will have changed, but not as much as people expect. More towers in Kowloon. More glass. Perhaps another slice of reclamation catching the light. The harbour will still be the harbour. On a clear winter afternoon the same ridgeline will still stop people talking. On a wet June afternoon the same white wall of cloud will still sit on the buildings and the same visitors will still write that they were cheated. Weather does not read the Tourism Board calendar.
Lugard Road will still be a road. Cars will still use it. The Lugard Road Lookout that I found in 1972 will still be better than Sky Terrace 428 on any honest comparison, and it will still have a fraction of the reviews. I would bet money on that.
The Peak Tower will still be there in some form. It is too famous to delete and too profitable to rebuild from scratch. The building will have been reclad. The shops will have different names. Sky Terrace 428 may have been renamed, raised, or split into two decks, but it will still not be a 360 degree view and it will still not be the best view at Victoria Peak. Some things are structural. And as the licence section says, the building does not expire with the tram right. That is why 2048 can still have the same building even if the name on the cars has changed.
The Peak Tram will still be a cable hauled funicular on the same Garden Road alignment unless someone finally funds another way up. You cannot secretly add a second track through Mid Levels apartment blocks. The steepest pitch on the present line is still about 25.7 degrees. The ride will still take about 8 minutes. Children will still squeal when the floor tilts. That part is safe.
How tall the Peak Tower really is, and why it stopped there
Sky Terrace 428 is 428 metres above sea level. That is not the height of the building. The Peak Tower sits in Victoria Gap at about 396 metres. The structure itself is only about 32 metres tall, 8 floors. 396 plus 32 is how you get 428. It was never a skyscraper that got chopped. It is a short building on a high piece of ground.
When Terry Farrell designed the 1997 replacement for the 1972 tower, the stated aim was a building that would show up on the skyline without breaking the natural line of the ridgeline. Victoria Gap is a dip. They put the structure in the dip and stopped the top at 428 metres above sea level so it sat in the notch rather than poking above the trees and the real summit. The 1972 tower had already used the same idea. So the squat shape began as a design choice.
That choice later became a government cap. On the Peak Area Outline Zoning Plan the site at 128 Peak Road is zoned Commercial (2). The notes now say no new development or redevelopment may exceed a maximum gross floor area of 11,021 square metres and a maximum building height of 430 metres above Principal Datum, or the height of the existing building, whichever is greater. Principal Datum is the official Hong Kong height measure. 430 metres above that is, in practice, the Peak Tower as it stands. The plan did not invent a low tower. It froze the one they already had.
The wider Victoria Peak area is full of height rules for other reasons. Preserve public views to the ridgeline. Keep the low density character of the houses. Stop the two lane roads being asked to carry another zillion vehicles. Residential zones on that side are mostly 2 to 12 storeys. Those rules are about houses, roads and the silhouette from the harbour.
The telecoms masts on the actual Victroia Peak malsummit at 552 metres are the things that puncture the skyline. The Peak Tower is down in the gap, 156 metres below that summit, trying not to compete with them. The masts got the high ground. The tourist building got the dip and a 430 metre cap.
That matters for any scheme that adds floors on top. Three extra storeys would push the building above 430 metres above Principal Datum unless the Town Planning Board agreed to break the number. Possible. Not a weekend job.
The Peak Tower looks like a wok, they say. I am not buying it
The official wording is a wok. Sometimes a rice bowl. Sometimes the upturned eaves of a Chinese roof. I have read it for years and I still refuse to believe that is what I am looking at.
Stand next to the Peak Galleria mall. Look at the Peak Tower front on. Then look at an image of a menorah.
A menorah is a sacred candelabrum with multiple branches used in Jewish tradition and worship
The lightbulb goes on. With Jewish guests I often do not have to say anything. They say it themselves. Seven branches, a central stem, arms rising to a line of lights. Once you have seen it you cannot unsee it. The rear view of the building makes that louder, not quieter. From the back you see the cantilever, the glass shaft and the white podium underneath. The brochure still says wok.
My reasoning is sound
The Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels group is a Kadoorie company. Sir Michael Kadoorie is Jewish. The family keeps a very low profile and I am not about to put words in anyone’s mouth, least of all his. I am not claiming a secret briefing note from 1993. I am saying the official wok story has never convinced me, and that a lot of people with no interest in architecture see the same silhouette I do. Make of that what you will. I will go on calling it the Peak Tower and our oldest son has a couple of degrees in architecture and he agrees with my menorah theory.
What will have changed in 2048, because it has to
Capacity on a single line is a maths problem, not a branding problem. Even if the seventh or eighth generation tram cars squeeze 250 people in, you still have to load them, unload them, and turn them around. Boarding 210 already takes longer than boarding 120 did. Boarding 250 will take longer again. Frequency is limited by the passing loop and by safety rules that will not be relaxed because someone in a suit wants a KPI. (and yes Hong Kong Government Ministers seem to be fixated on KPI’s)
I keep hearing that the sixth generation cars solved the 2018 problem. They did not, period. They changed the shape of it. In 2018 you waited longer at Garden Road for a smaller car. In 2026 you wait less there and then stand in a car holding 210 passengers. By 2048, unless someone builds another way up or uses the floors they already have, you will wait by appointment and still stand. Victoria Peak has not moved since 2018. Only the story about the queue has.
So the real changes by 2048 will be in rationing, not in physics, unless a second approach is built or the Peak Tower is finally treated as a station rather than a shopping mall.
Timed entry will be normal. Not a polite suggestion. A ticket with a 20 minute window, bought days ahead, dynamic price that jumps when the weather app says visibility is 20 kilometres. Residents may get a quieter morning band if anyone in government still remembers that people live up there. I would not count on it.
Prices will be higher. They always are. I Quote them in both currencies because visitors still think in both. If an adult return is already in the HK$88 to HK$116 range today, about US$11 to US$15, call it HK$180 to HK$250 in 2048 money without even trying hard, say US$23 to US$32 at a guess, and that is before the paid viewing terrace Sky 428. The Ruby style fast track will still exist and it will still annoy me. Paying double to avoid a queue that the operator created is not hospitality. It is a toll booth with a view.
Coaches will still be the unsolved mess. The Peak Galleria Mall has a finite number of bays. Peak Road cannot be widened without cutting into slopes that already have expensive houses on them. By 2048 I expect more rules rather than more tarmac. Staggered arrival slots for tour coaches. Smaller vehicles only after 14:00. A police officer with a whistle, same as now, only hotter. The day the 40 coach tailback of a mid autumn afternoon becomes an 80 coach tailback is the day someone finally admits Peak Road is the real capacity limit, not the tram. We already saw the 20 to 40 coach version in 2018. It was not a one off. It was a pattern.
The holding pen in the Peak Tower they already have and refuse to use
I do not have the original schematics on the desk, but I have walked the building often enough to know how it is put together. The Peak Tower is not a shallow box. The rear photograph with this piece shows that better than the postcard. Below the Peak Road entrance you already have two large public floors, P1 and P2, and under the station itself a plant basement for the tram gear. From the back you see the white podium stacked down the slope, the coloured square windows, the glass shaft with the escalators in the middle, and the viewing platform sitting on top with people on the rim. Ground floor is the departure side. P1 is the arrival side. When you get off the Peak Tram you are, in effect, one floor below the ground floor. That is not a theory. That is the building.
P1 is Peak Market, souvenirs, the post office and the door into Madame Tussauds. P2 is the lower public floor, now tied up with the waxworks expansion and more retail. The machinery under the platforms is not a waiting room and never will be. So the holding hall does not require a new hole in the rock. The floor is already there.
The toilets on that arrival floor are already excellent. That is not the gap. The gap is seats, and an indoor line.
What they do with the space is the scandal.
I am not trying to be dramatic but on a busy day or really any day after 2pm the snake now forms outside the Peak Tower, in the sun, in the rain, in that thin wind that comes across Victoria Gap and makes 18 degrees feel like 8. People who have paid for a ride, or are about to, stand on the paving like a queue for a pop concert. It is shocking. It is also a choice. Before Covid they let the line form on the ground floor, inside, in the air conditioning. That stopped. The indoor space went back to shops. The weather was given the passengers.
I have been on this earth for a long time. I am a sales and marketing guy. I understand exactly what the owners are doing. They want every last dollar out of the Peak Tower, and a souvenir unit on P1 earns more than a bench for people waiting for a tram. I have watched the same habit in shopping malls all over Hong Kong. You want to sit down for 5 minutes and there is nowhere to sit, because a seat is a square metre that is not a shop. The Peak Tower is that mall instinct bolted onto a tram station. Arrive 210 passengers at a time, pour the lot through a gift shop gauntlet, and if the platform cannot take them, put them outside.
Convert the arrival floor one floor down and you fix most of it without touching the 430 metre cap and without digging 3 new basements. Seats. A simple snack shop. Keep the toilets that already work. A line that stays indoors. Keep Ground as the boarding side. Keep some retail if the numbers demand it. What you should not keep is the pretence that there is no room. There is room. It is full of I love HK magnets and T shirts. The giant snake in the rain is not a capacity problem. It is a seating problem, and a manners problem, and it would not last a week if the people in the queue were the ones collecting the rent.
Close the Peak Tower for a year, or dig, or simply change the floor
If they ever did want a bigger rebuild, the menu is short.
Close the Peak Tower for a year. Convert more of the lower floors into a proper holding area. Add 3 floors on top if the Town Planning Board will break the 430 metre cap. Turn Sky Terrace 428 into 2 decks. Put the shops back above. That is the expensive version. Time kills it. A year of hoardings around a postcard building is not a brochure.
Dig 3 new levels under the present ground. Escalators up to the tram. The silhouette stays put. The cap is untouched. Geology, water and a working funicular make that a two year headache.
Or do the thing that costs the least. Use floor P1. It is already one floor below ground floor. People already exit the tram onto it. The toilets are already good. The air conditioning already exists. Before Covid the indoor line already existed. They stopped it. Start it again, and this time put seats in so a 65 year old, or a 6 year old, does not have to treat the pavement as the waiting room.
Ugly week of shopfitting. Better decade. That is the trade they will not make while a T shirt earns more than a chair. It is also the sort of condition that could be written into a 2035 renewal, if anyone in the room is still thinking about passengers rather than souvenirs.
Transport Plan B, Plan C and Plan D
People ask why there is no second Peak Tram. On the Garden Road side the answer is land, gradient, residents, trees, cost and the fact that the first one already occupies the only alignment that ever made sense from Central through the Mid Levels. A second tram from Admiralty or Kennedy Town on that northern face would be a new railway over rooftops. I have not seen a funded alignment there. I do not expect one.
A cable car over Mid Levels gets suggested every few years, usually by someone who has just come back from Ngong Ping. A cabin over those roads and flats would have to fly above people who did not buy their property so that a gondola could pass the bedroom window. Noise, visual intrusion, typhoon shutdowns and evacuation plans kill most of those northern ideas before the first pylon.
Extra roads on the Peak Road and Stubbs Road corridor. Same problem. You would be cutting a new corridor through one of the most expensive residential belts on the island. The last major idea of that sort dies in a district council file.
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Proposed site for a second Peak Tram or Cable Car - Pok Fu Lam to the Peak
The Pok Fu Lam approach that nobody wants to take seriously
There is another way up, and it is not science fiction. It is a walk I have done more than a few times over the decades
From Pok Fu Lam you can come up through the country park and, if you stay on the path, you come off it next to the Peak Lookout Restaurant opposite the Peak Tower. The photographs above with this piece where taken at that entrance. The reservoir is in the bowl on the right. The trees fill the slope. The towers of Pok Fu Lam sit down below, not on the path. Lamma Island and the power station are out in the channel. There are no apartment blocks sitting on the alignment. The land is government land. Transport from Central to Pok Fu Lam already exists and is ordinary, not exotic. That combination is rare in this city. Most second route ideas die because someone owns the slope, someone lives on the slope, or the slope is already full of pipes and roads. The Pok Fu Lam side is the exception. It is very green and, in engineering terms, the open ground is there.
A second tram track on that approach would not be a twin of the 1888 line. It would be a new funicular, or a hybrid, starting low on the western side and finishing at Victoria Gap beside the restaurant rather than inside the Peak Tower. A cable car on the same corridor is the other version. Cabins through a country park are a different argument from cabins over Mid Levels bedrooms. Trees, a reservoir catchment and a government path are politically simpler than Barker Road and Plantation Road, even if the green groups would still want a say, and they should.
I am not saying it is cheap. I am not saying it happens by 2030. I am saying it is the only second approach I can walk today, photograph from the country park gate, and finish next to the Peak Lookout Restaurant without arguing with a building. If Hong Kong is still talking about 80 million or 100 million visitors in the 2040s, this is the alignment that ought to be in the first drawing, not the last footnote. Leave the 1888 tram as the heritage ride from Garden Road. Put the volume on the Pok Fu Lam side, in trees, on government land, with a terminus that does not dump another 210 people into the same Peak Tower holding pen.
Will it be built. That is politics and money. Can it be built. Yes. The path is already there. The restaurant is already there. The reservoir can be walked around now. Pretending there is no second way up is convenient. It is not accurate and me being me, why build one when you could do two, you could build 2 tram tracks or have a funicular railway and a cable car, a twofer - they built a cable car at Ocean Park not too far away to get people up and over a small hill
What could still happen even if Pok Fu Lam stays on paper and floor P1 stays a market
If the second approach is not funded and the arrival floor stays full of souvenirs, the real world version is incremental.
more Citybus and green minibus frequency
a resident only time band on Peak Road at the worst two hours
a park and ride at the bottom, which we already half have and never quite finish
walking promoted as if it were new, which it is not, and which still needs decent shoes and frankly I would not even mention walking up to the Peak given how steep it is
Plan D, the one nobody prints, is demand management. A daily cap on the paid Peak Tower experience. A cap on tram tickets sold. A cap on coach permits. That is how places with one road and one famous view eventually behave when the alternative is a permanent crush. It will be sold as a premium upgrade. It will feel like a turnstile. If we had been honest after 2018, some of that would already be in place.
Drones, mini helicopters and the air above Victoria Peak - the Blade Runner scenario
This is the part everyone wants in the 2048 version. I will give it to you, then I will take most of it away.
Small drones for photography are already a nuisance on a windy ridge. By 2048 the consumer versions will be quieter and the commercial ones will be licensed. A paid drone corridor off the north face, well clear of the tram alignment, is imaginable. A free for all over Sky Terrace 428 is not. The Peak Tram has no overhead wires. The haulage ropes run along the track, not above it. That does not make a drone harmless. A crash onto the cars, the passing loop or the crowd on the terrace is enough. Add the masts on the summit and the helicopter paths that already exist, and the Civil Aviation Department will have a view. The first serious incident ends the fashion.
Drones are not the only thing that will stop a car. A few days ago the tram had to halt just before May Road because a group of visitors were hanging over the track to take selfies with the car behind them. No rotor blades. No 2048. Just a phone and no grasp that 210 people were going down the same piece of line. Wild boar belong on that list as well. They already treat the slopes as their own. The Peak Tram cannot dodge. Peak Road cannot either. The first serious incident on this alignment will not need a flying taxi. It will need someone standing where they should not, or an animal that does not read the timetable.
Electric vertical take off taxis, the little six rotor taxis that appear in every future city video, are a different question. Hong Kong will have tried them somewhere flatter first. Over Victoria Harbour, perhaps, on a calm evening, as a novelty. Over Victoria Peak as a mass tourist product I struggle with. The ridge is a wind machine. Summer rain is not a backdrop, it is a shutdown. Approach paths would have to miss the Peak Tram cables, the towers, the helicopter paths that already exist, and the radio masts on the actual summit. You might get a boutique service for 4 people at a time at HK$2,000 a head, about US$256. You will not get a second Peak Tram in the sky. Physics and the Civil Aviation Department will see to that.
Mini helicopters are the same story with more noise. Residents on Barker Road and Plantation Road will have views on the subject. Those views will not be romantic.
What might exist, if I am being generous, is a short scenic hop from a pad on the south side, away from the main visitor deck, running only in certified weather, booked like a table. A toy for people who have already done the tram. Not a solution to 100 million arrivals, and not a solution to the mess we already had at 65.1 million.
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The Peak Tower taken from Lugard Road, much bigger than it looks from the front
The Peak Tower as a machine for weather
The paid terrace is a hostage to cloud. By 2048 the operator will have stopped pretending otherwise. Expect a climate controlled indoor gallery with a live wraparound image of the harbour, stitched from cameras on clearer days, sold as the all weather Peak. Purists will hate it. Families with tired children will use it. The outdoor terrace will become the fine day extra, priced higher. That is how you keep the shop units trading when Victoria Peak is inside a cloud for the fifth afternoon running.
I first went up on a January day when the air was sharp. I have also been up in June when you could not see the Lion Pavilion from the Galleria. Both days count. Only one of them sells itself.
Technology that will arrive whether we want it or not
Facial tickets. Bag scans that feel like an airport. A phone pass that buzzes when your tram window opens. Translation earbuds so the same recorded history plays in 12 languages in the lower terminus museum. An AR overlay on the terrace that names every building, including ones that have not been finished yet. All of that is easy. None of it adds a chair on P1 whilst you wait to get on the Tram
What I hope they do not do is replace the human at the platform with a screen and a rope. The 2022 cars are already a squeeze when 43 people are standing. A full car in high summer is not a heritage moment. It is a lift that forgot it was a lift. If 2048 brings better loading staff and a hard limit on standees, that would be progress. If it brings a QR code and nobody in a uniform, it will feel worse than 2026, and worse than 2018.
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Day and Night View from the Lugard Road Lookout at Victoria Peak
The view, honestly
People will still come for the view. That will not change. What they see from the paid terrace will still be a cropped version of what you get from the Lugard Road Lookout after a 20 minute walk on the flat. I have been saying that for years and I will still be saying it if I am around in 2048. The trees will have moved. A building or two will have popped up. The harbour will still do the heavy lifting at dusk.
The light will still be better after 17:00 in winter and worse at noon in August. The night view will be denser. More LEDs, fewer neon tubes. The old Bank of China angles will still photograph well. None of that requires a new tram.
From the Pok Fu Lam gate the other view is already there as well. West over the reservoir, the trees, Lamma Island and the channel. That is the view most visitors never see because they are pointed at the harbour from the Peak Tower and told they have done Victoria Peak., I must stress that the Pok Fu Lam idea is simply just a new way to get visitors to the Peak in a timely manner, the ride will be pleasant, the views from the windows will be fine but the Harbour view will still be the view you want.
How Victoria Peak copes if the numbers really do keep rising
If I have to sketch the ugly realistic version, it looks like this.
Victoria Peak becomes a booked attraction with a free fringe. The Peak Tower and the Garden Road tram are the paid core, timed, priced to thin the crowd. Lugard Road, Harlech Road, Victoria Peak Garden and the benches near the old Governor’s walk stay open and absorb the people who will not pay or cannot get a slot. Coaches are booked into 15 minute docks or they do not dock. Buses keep running because residents still need them. Taxis keep coming because this is Hong Kong.
On the worst 20 days of the year the police close Peak Road to casual traffic for two hours and everyone moans. Then they do it again the next Golden Week. That already happened in all but name in 2018. The difference in 2048 will be that it is printed on the ticket.
If the Pok Fu Lam line or cable car is ever built, the pressure splits. Garden Road keeps the heritage ride. The western approach takes the volume and lands people next to the Peak Lookout Restaurant instead of inside the Peak Tower cattle pen 2 minutes away. The country park gate would become an arrival, not just a footpath.
If P1 becomes a holding hall again, the Garden Road tram at least stops fighting its own building. That is the version in which 210 people can get off without the next 210 standing in the rain, and without picking a fight with the 430 metre cap.
If neither happens, 80 million or 100 million arrivals simply recreate 2018 with nicer graphics. The 1966 to 1997 table already showed the direction of travel. Nobody can say they were not told.
Alternative viewpoints quietly take more of the load either way. Braemar Hill. The walk above Quarry Bay. Devil’s Peak if anyone ever maintains the path. Fei Ngo Shan on a clear day. Tai Mo Shan for the people who finally accept that Victoria Peak is not the highest point in Hong Kong. Those places will not replace the postcard. They will stop the postcard from bursting.
Virtual visits will exist. A decent 8K video walk along Lugard Road, filmed on a January morning, sold to people who would rather not stand in a queue. I do not love that. I would rather they came and walked. But if the choice is a virtual walk or a real stampede on a 35 degrees C afternoon, the virtual walk has a case.
Out of left field, some more odd thoughts
A few thoughts that do not belong in a government paper.
The Peak Tram becomes a heritage ride with a daily cap of paid tourist cars, and a separate early workers service that actually behaves like public transport again. Unlikely. Attractive.
The government takes the operating right back in a later renewal and runs the tram as a civic asset with a resident fare. Also unlikely. The present arrangement pays 12% of revenue for the government land under the track. Money talks. And as already said, taking the tram is not the same as taking the Peak Tower.
A ban on same day walk up tram tickets after 11:00. Brutal. Effective. I can already hear the letters. After 2018 it should not have sounded radical.
What I would tell a guest in 2048 if I were still taking people up there
Go early. That sentence has survived every upgrade since I was 11. It survived 2018. It will survive 2048.
If the tram slot is after 11:00 on a Saturday, take the bus or a car and keep your temper. Walk Lugard Road. Wear shoes with a grip. Watch for cars. Do not confuse the Lion Pavilion with a great view. Do not confuse Sky Terrace 428 with a 360 degree anything. If the cloud is in, spend the money on lunch somewhere you can see a wall, not a white sheet. If the day is clear, walk 30 seconds from the Peak Lookout Restaurant to the Pok Fu Lam Country Park gate and look the other way, over the reservoir and the trees.
Stand by the Galleria before you go in and decide for yourself what the Peak Tower looks like. Then walk round the back. The front sells the Peak Tower. The back shows the white floors where people get off the tram. That is the part the queue should never have to leave.
And remember that Victoria Peak is a small piece of the island with a famous angle. It was not designed as the overflow tank for a city chasing 100 million arrivals. It was not even comfortable at 65.1 million. It was designed as Victoria Peak, with a road, a tram and some houses. In 1972 the city took 1.1 million visitors. In 1997 it took 10.4 million and opened this Peak Tower. In 2018 it took 65.1 million and called the result an experience. The houses are still there. The road is still two lanes. The Garden Road tram is still one line. The Peak Tower is still a shop with a platform attached, held at 430 metres above Principal Datum, and it is not on the same 10 year string as the tram. The arrival floor is still there, with excellent toilets and not enough chairs. The Pok Fu Lam path is still sitting there waiting for someone with a drawing board. That is the whole essay, really.
So there you go. 2048 will have better signs, dearer tickets, tighter slots and the same harbour. The Peak Tower will still be an acquired taste unless someone is brave enough to put the passengers back indoors, where the air conditioning already is. The Peak Tram will still be worth one ride, preferably down, when the car is not stuffed. The rest is management, which this city is good at announcing and average at fitting onto Victoria Peak. We had the warning in the arrival table. We had the warning again in 2018. We rebuilt the downstairs waiting room and called it a solution. Victoria Peak did not notice. The country park gate did not notice either. It is still 30 seconds from the restaurant.
If the authorities ever do publish a real Plan B, I want to see three drawings on the first page. One is Pok Fu Lam through the country park to the Peak Lookout Restaurant. One is P1 used as a station again, with seats. One is the present silhouette left alone, because going up means a fight with 430 metres above Principal Datum. Until then, the plan is the same plan we have now. Sell the view. Live with the queue. Hope it does not rain.
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A look into the future - what to expect at Victoria Peak Hong Kong in 2048
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