The Making of the 6th Generation Peak Tram

The long-awaited documentary film about the Making of the 6th Generation Peak Tram was finally released this week.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nk2_-Bq-EGs

Watching this short documentary reminded me what is possible with a flexible team, sensible and proactive regulators and a serious amount of hard work! I hope you enjoy the film.

Scope creep can be devastating to a project but change itself should not be feared as a suitable, well-managed change can be implemented for the ultimate benefit of the project. As an example of this, in the initial project planning and funding the 1980s brick fountain in front of St Johns Building was to remain, either announcing or blocking the main entrance to the Peak Tram, depending upon your point-of-view. There was no intention originally to create the inviting, open plaza space with its reflecting pool and signature artwork by renowned artist Lindy Lee. This was recognised as a change worth making, and one that required significant imagination, foresight, perseverance, investment, design, analysis, coordination and approval. This inviting entrance area features heavily in the documentary and helps to reinforce the point made about the complexity of such a small project.

At only 30 minutes running time, what the documentary isn’t able to capture are some of the other numerous improvements that we made during the project to create an even better asset than envisaged. Here a just some of the great things that we did to improve the customer experience:

The documentary covers the overall sizing of the new Peak Tram, but did you know that the original planned intent was for a 200-person capacity tramcar, not 210 as delivered? As we worked through the early design of the seating arrangements, the rhythm of placing the seats and windows to optimise passengers’ views and maximise boarding and alighting efficiency helped us to create this opportunity for more capacity. This change was incorporated relatively early, allowing us ample time to secure the legislative amendments necessary for the capacity increase, before implementing all the technical changes on weight, haulage capacity and the like that followed.

Another improvement worth pursuing, and not highlighted in the film, was our Chairman Sir Michael Kadoorie’s long-standing wish to provide reversible or downhill-facing seating. This would be a significant departure from the all uphill-facing seating arrangements of the previous five generations of tramcar. Having created the tramcar exterior window and door arrangements, aligned to the interior aisles and seating blocks, we were able to spend some significant time researching, prototyping and testing downhill-facing seat arrangements leading to the 22 that were eventually incorporated in each tramcar. Our early investigations involved 3D modelling of various seat configurations inside the cabin space, manufacturing a pair of trial seats and then testing them for safety, comfort, experience and ride quality. The Peak Tram would operate until midnight and then after shutdown, the engineering team would remove three rows of seats, install our trial versions and we would run closed-loop tests with Peak Tram management, the operations team and our tramcar advisors Peter Stevens and Hili Manz. These trial seats would then be removed and replaced ready for the start of operations at 7am the following morning. The prototyping, testing, extensive research, risk assessment and mitigation, and approval work took an incredible amount of unseen time and effort, in order to deliver these most sought-after seats. I remain very proud that we did so. The sheer excitement from those downhill-seated passengers enjoying the unique view of Hong Kong harbour as the Peak Tram runs downhill over the brow of the slope and onto the steepest section of the track is still a joy to behold.

There are numerous other improvements and solutions to unseen challenges that we implemented during the upgrade of Hong Kong’s iconic Peak Tram. Have you heard of Bowen Road station? Do you know why the track alignment kicks left and then sweeps right as it runs down towards the Central Terminus? I could write a book. Perhaps one day I will.

My name is Mark G Lomas, I am a Chartered Project Professional, and I was the Project Director for the Making of the 6th Generation Peak Tram from 2016 through to 2022.

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