Public Transportation and Social Movements: Learning from the Hong Kong Anti-Extradition Bill Protests

Abstract

In this article, we address the public transportation system’s resilience in social movements, which has been under-explored in transportation scholarship. On the one hand, public transportation enables mass mobilization of people and materials and large-scale public engagement in political/social events in transit-reliant cities like Hong Kong. On the other hand, public transportation can be an instrument for both the government and event participants—the former interferes with the public transportation service provision to manage and mitigate the adverse impacts of social movements it perceives on society, whereas the latter disrupt public transportation services or vandalize and damage related facilities to express their discontent and to put pressure on the former. The dynamic resilience of the public transportation system against the above backdrop warrants more in-depth exploration. We incorporate both supply and demand shocks to theorize resilience as a public transportation system’s capability to return to a new equilibrium between the supply and demand after a disturbance. The theoretical approach is illustrated using empirical data and publicly available materials concerning the 2019 Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill movement in Hong Kong.

Transit Usage in Social Shocks: A Case Study of Station-Level Metro Ridership in Anti-Extradition Protests in Hong Kong

“…Parallel to our previous works (9), of which resilience framework recognizes the importance of investigating demand shock during social shock, in this article, we further provide quantitative evidence with (spatial) regression models by quantifying the impacts of different influencers on the change in ridership and singling out prospective spatial error and spatial lag effects. We fit linear regression models (LRMs) to quantify the relationships between the change in ridership and its influencers and running spatial regression models (SRMs) to deal with spatial dependence, if any.…”

“…For transit operators and analysts, these protests and their impacts on the metro's operations have offered them unprecedented ''testbeds'', that is, empirical cases and real-world data to rediscover the metro's ridership in protests and explore how the system could/can be managed efficiently to meet the safety and mobility demands of riders before, during, and after protests. Parallel to the authors' previous work (9), in which a resilience framework recognizes the importance of investigating demand shock during social shock, this paper further provides quantitative evidence with (spatial) regression models by quantifying the impacts of different influences on the change in ridership and singling out prospective spatial error and spatial lag effects. Linear regression models (LRMs) are fit to quantify the relationships between the change in ridership and its influences and running spatial regression models (SRMs) to deal with spatial dependence, if any.…”

“…The abovementioned case studies provide examples of how a range of social events could resemble social protests in terms of disrupting normal transit operations (21). Transit infrastructure can enable and also suffer from social movements (9,22), in other words, social movements could induce both predictable and unpredictable disruptions. On the one hand, political protests as one form of social activities can strain transit networks that are necessary for mobilizing large numbers of people; on the other hand, protesters disturb and even disrupt mass transit systems to gain political bargaining powers against the governments.…”

“…A series of protests triggered by an extradition bill since June 2019 in Hong Kong provide additional and the most recent evidence on this in the East Asia context. The direct aftermaths and indirect impacts of these protests are so wide-ranging and far-reaching that a wide array of topics is worth (further) investigation (e.g., Yam [ 4 ] and Chan and Zhou [ 5 ]). To most local inhabitants in Hong Kong, one significant change they can observe caused by the social movement is that whenever protests occur, many protesters depend on public transit, metro in particular, to travel to and from protest sites.…”

“…This certainly disturbs, strains, and even disrupts transit systems, with the sudden increase in ridership and temporary suspensions and closures of certain entrances, stations, and lines because of safety concerns or unexpected vandalism. Researchers have produced in-depth knowledge on why, how, and when social movements occur, escalate, and spread (e.g., Uitermark and Nicholls [ 3 ], Chan and Zhou [ 5 ], Salah Fahmi [ 6 ], and Tufekci [ 7 ]). Little work has been done, however, on where protests occur most frequently in cities, how many protesters travel to and from a common protest site, and how the systems could/should be managed efficiently given various disturbances arising from the protests.…”