Mid-Levels Escalator

The Central-Mid-Levels Escalator is the longest outdoor covered escalator system in the world — an 800-metre series of 20 escalators and 3 travelators that climbs 135 metres from the financial district of Central to the residential Mid-Levels, carrying 85,000 commuters daily and providing one of the most distinctive urban experiences in any city. The escalator runs downhill in the morning (carrying residents to work) and uphill in the afternoon and evening (carrying them home), and riding it at any time provides a vertical tour through the layers of Hong Kong society.

The escalator passes through SoHo (South of Hollywood Road) — a neighbourhood of bars, restaurants, and galleries that developed specifically because the escalator made the steep hillside accessible — and the shops, cafés, and apartment buildings at escalator level create a passing-window view of daily life that is unique to Hong Kong. You see into restaurant kitchens, living rooms, and office windows as you glide past, which creates an intimacy with the city that walking on the street can't match.

The escalator was built in 1993 as a solution to traffic congestion on the narrow streets connecting Central to the Mid-Levels, and its effect on the surrounding property values was immediate and transformative — SoHo barely existed before the escalator created foot traffic, and the restaurants and bars along its route owe their existence to the decision to build the world's longest outdoor escalator through a hillside of century-old tenement buildings.