It is close to midnight on a Friday, but the queues of vehicles at the entrances to the Cross Harbour Tunnel show no sign of dissipating. At the Hong Kong Island end, the line of vehicles extends 800 metres to the Sun Hung Kai Centre on Gloucester Road, Wan Chai.
The scene, common on most weekends and on some weekdays, is a reality that motorists have come to expect.
At the far end of the island, the Western Harbour Tunnel is eerily quiet. 'On many nights, I am the only driver during my entire journey inside that three-lane tube,' said night-shift taxi driver Eric Cheung. 'You could drive in a zig-zag path without bumping into another car.'
Mr Cheung would not have chosen Hong Kong's most expensive tunnel if the latest round of toll rises by the operator, Western Harbour Tunnel Company, had not kept the concessionary rate of HK$10 for empty taxis between midnight and 7am.
But the same concession is not available for daytime taxi drivers, private vehicles, minibuses and franchised buses, who have had to pay from 10 to 15 per cent more since the company ended most toll concessions on January 6.
When the island's third tunnel was put into service in 1997, it was hoped that, apart from completing the link between the airport and Central, it would divert some traffic from the Cross Harbour Tunnel.
In October, 10 years after its opening, average daily traffic in the western tunnel was less than a quarter of that in the Cross Harbour Tunnel. In the past five years an average of more than 120,000 journeys a day have been made using the Cross Harbour Tunnel, compared with 50,000 in the western tunnel and 65,000 in the Eastern Harbour Tunnel.