The original system, designed by Dunedin-born engineer James Fulton, was neither a true cable car nor a conventional funicular. It was both. Like a San Francisco cable car, the line had a continuous loop haulage cable that the cars gripped. But it also had a funicular-style balance cable permanently attached to both cars over an undriven pulley at the top of the line. The descending car gripped the haulage cable and was pulled downhill, which in turn pulled the ascending car uphill via the balance cable. A Fell-type centre rail provided emergency braking. Construction began in 1899 with three teams working around the clock, and the line opened to the public on 22 February 1902. Demand was immediate and intense -- thousands of passengers rode each day. By 1903, old horse-drawn Wellington trams had been converted into cable car trailers to handle the crowds. Steam-powered winding gear drove the system until 1933, when an electric motor took over.

The Cable Car's middle decades were turbulent. In the 1940s, City Council buses began running to Karori and the western suburbs, bypassing the funicular entirely. The private Kelburne & Karori Tramway Company protested that the council was competing unfairly with a private operator, and the dispute ended only when the council agreed to buy the company outright in February 1947. By the 1960s and 1970s, the aging wooden cars drew complaints about safety and comfort. On 10 May 1973, a motorway construction worker was seriously injured stepping in front of a car at the Clifton stop, and the resulting Ministry of Works review concluded that aspects of the system were unsafe -- particularly the unbraked trailers. The trailers were withdrawn, slashing capacity. Despite public protests led by Mayor Michael Fowler, the line closed on 22 September 1978 for a complete rebuild by Habegger AG of Switzerland, which replaced the old hybrid system with a standard funicular. New steel cars arrived. The line reopened on 22 October 1979.

When the refurbished Cable Car started running in 1979, one of its drivers made history without fanfare. Lorraine Ruka-Isaac became the first woman to drive a cable car in New Zealand, holding the position from 1979 to 1981. The early years of the new system were rocky -- frequent technical interruptions and extensive safety checks drove patronage down to a low of 500,000 in 1982, half what it had been in the system's prime. A serious accident in 1988 put the cars out of service for months. But a major revamp after that accident solved most of the mechanical problems, and patronage began a steady climb that continues today. On 30 December 2023, the Cable Car recorded its millionth passenger of the year -- the first time that milestone had been reached since the COVID-19 pandemic. The five-minute ride carries commuters, students, tourists, and Wellingtonians heading to the Botanic Garden, all in the same car, all on the same 17.86-percent grade.

New Zealand's 1991 deregulation of passenger transport threatened to end public ownership of the Cable Car. Councils could no longer provide transport services directly and had to either privatize or corporatize. Wellington City Council sold its bus operation but, under intense public pressure, retained the Cable Car and the trolleybus overhead wiring. Operations were contracted out -- first to a joint venture between the Stagecoach Group and ferry operator East by West, then to Serco. Wellington Cable Car Ltd finally brought operations in-house in 2007. The pandemic hit hard: patronage dropped 72 percent and revenue fell 77 percent in 2021-22, requiring $1.3 million in council support. By 2023, the operation was profitable again. The Cable Car carries a Heritage New Zealand Category II listing, and its museum has won national tourism awards. Through every ownership change and financial crisis, the city has chosen to keep it running rather than let it go.

The track passes through three tunnels and over three bridges, rising at a constant grade through the hillside that separates Wellington's commercial center from its green, residential heights. At the bottom, Cable Car Lane opens onto Lambton Quay, the city's main shopping street, where automated turnstiles replaced the old entry system in 2006. At the top, passengers step out beside the Wellington Botanic Garden, within walking distance of the Space Place observatory, the Cable Car Museum, and the Kelburn neighborhood with its cafes and university campus. The landmark Kelburn Kiosk, built at the upper terminal in 1905, burned down in a suspicious fire in 1982 and was replaced by the Skyline Restaurant in 1984. In the middle of the line, at Talavera station, the two cars pass each other on a brief double-track section -- one climbing, one descending, connected by a single 30-millimeter cable looping around a pulley at the top of the hill, driven by a 198-kilowatt motor. The engineering is simple. The experience is not. Five minutes of slow, steep ascent transforms the urban grid below into a panorama of harbor, hills, and sky.