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Comment by hrktb | Hacker News Reader

> The MTR is the one technology the Hong Kong protests could not do without, an autonomous fiefdom that the police mostly stay out of. It is neutral territory

This is a godsend. During Paris protest earlier this year the gov would just shut down public transports for about 5~10 km around and block main accesses so people couldn’t massively join the protests.

At least the mainland gov. didn’t get to touch that I guess.

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Some stations have been shutdown several times in the past few weeks, I'm not sure if it was on the request of the police, or the MTR just decided to skip stations. However, this wasn't due to people going to protests, this was due to increased violence, and even attacks inside the stations.

Last week the HK police decided to fire tear gas within a station as well.

> However, this wasn't due to people going to protests, this was due to increased violence, and even attacks inside the stations.

Yes, and it's legitimate from a business point of view.

But then, if the police wanted to shut down these stations, causing violences/attacks would also be a way to push MTR's hand (they've already hired mobs to stir the protests, trashing stations for strategic advantage wouldn't be out of character)

I believe the police have also requested the MTR to add additional train services, so that people could get out of affected areas.

There's been a lot of push back on the police operating inside the MTR stations, especially after what happened last time. It's one thing to try and push people to leave the area, another thing to fire tear gas rounds at the entrances of MTR stations.

The protestors have already shown that they can cripple the MTR network within a couple of hours, I doubt the MTR want to be on the wrong side.

Exactly what I was thinking. China can simply shut down the public transport system next time and that will do it. No violence, no tear gas.

At that point, have they done the protestors' job for them? That would cause massive disruption and would make the authorities savagely unpopular. Maybe if they'd done that at the start, they could have blamed the protestors for making it necessary, but by now, everyone has seen that it's perfectly possible to run the MTR alongside the protests and would blame the authorities for unnecessarily shutting it down.

If you close public transport 5~10km around the protests, there wouldn't be much public transport operating in Paris. Rather there were a handful of closed subway stations, around where the protests were (like Etoile was closed, but not the closest stations). I understand the idea, a stampede in subway corridors would have caused casualties.

I think you might be referring to the later protests. Before the gov. "concessions", they shut down basically a quarter of Paris.

Even without using public transportation, you could try to walk from the Louvre to Etoile for instance and get blocked as soon as at Concorde by police barricades. We went to Chatelet/Les Halles during the whole thing, and you would see protesters preparing their masks, helmets etc. and planning their path to the main place to avoid hitting the main police blocks.

> During Paris protest earlier this year the gov would just shut down public transports for about 5~10 km around

10km is nearly Paris' width so I'd say that's a bit much. If I remember correctly, they closed the main stations around the protests but not much more.

You are right, and checked back, La Defense -> Chatelet is 9.4km (that's the two RER stations left open after shutting down CDG Etoile and Auber. And they basically shut down anything between these stations)

They shut down 36 stations in total at the peak of the demos: https://www.lavoixdunord.fr/502926/article/2018-12-07/la-rat...

My bad, didn't realise there were so many stations shut down.

I travelled without any hassles on those days so I assumed just a couple of main stations were closed.

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