Lantau cable car to close for five months for renovations
Visitors to the Big Buddha and Po Lin Monastery will have to take either a bus or taxi as work is carried out
One of the city’s most popular tourist attractions, the Ngong Ping 360 cable car, will shut down for five months from January to have its cables replaced.
Opened in 2006, the 5.7km cable car system on Lantau Island is set to see its wire ropes reach the end of their designed lifespan next year after a decade of operation, management said.
Visitors who wish to see the famed Big Buddha and Po Lin Monastery will have to take a bus or taxi from Tung Chung Town Centre Terminus until the service resumes in June.
Although the cable car operator claimed the HK$80 million rope replacement project is a “normal and necessary process” for a bi-cable ropeway, some 50,000 tourists are expected to be affected during the period, based on current visitor numbers.
“We expect some reduction in visitation to Ngong Ping during the period,” Stella Kwan Mun-yee, managing director at Ngong Ping 360, a subsidiary of the MTR Corporation, said.
