Good late morning, afternoon from Washington DC.  Before I make my way out to the airport to fly back home to London, I thought I would catch up on some of the weekend’s news.

Speaking of travel, over the years our correspondent in Russia, Grigory Pasko, has done an inordinate amount of reporting on this blog about the unfortunate conditions of the roads in so many parts of the regions.  Though perhaps peculiar to an outsider, anyone who has traveled to Russia and bothered to get outside of Moscow and St. Petersburg, would understand our fixation on this routine minutae of transportation infrastructure.

By comparison, I recall driving along the coastline of a certain small Central American country
some years ago, and noticing that we couldn’t go more than half a mile
without hitting dozens of large speed bumps.  I asked my local friend
why they didn’t just post speed limits or something instead of ruining
the shocks on his little Nissan and every other car.  He said, “Bobby, this is just one of those signs indicative of a country where people don’t bother to observe the law.“ 
Impunity, in other words, goes beyond white collar crime and human
rights violations on down to routine traffic violations and violations
of safety laws.

In Russia, at least in many parts of the region, one would be
challenged to get going very fast before hitting some rather daunting
and damaging potholes.  Though the poor condition of the roads may help
reduce traffic fatalities, the truth is that transportation
infrastructure is one area that this government has really dropped the
ball – showing a severe under-investment and inefficiency during a
period of high growth.  Paul Goble recently posted on this subject
as well as some other news sources, reporting that between 1989 and
2008, Russia’s transportation infrastructure almost did not increase at
all – only adding some 5,000 km of new roads.  In comparison, Brazil’s
roads and highways grew by some 65%, while China builts more kilometres
of new roads every ten days than Russia did last year (though that may
have something to do with the fact that the cost per km to build a road
in Russia is among the highest in the world).  Naturally, the lack of
infrastructure is challenge to Russia’s economic competitiveness …
Stratfor has written on this in the past.

As such, I am reading with great interest all the news this weekend about President Dmitry Medvedev’s actions to counter the high amount of highway traffic fatalities in Russia.  On Thursday, he convened an automobile safety conference, spoke at length about the problem.  Medvedev’s prompt action was a response to a horrific traffic accident which killed 21 people, contributing to the inglorious ranking of Russia as #1 in road traffic fatalities in all of Europe (21 per 100,000 – compared to 6 per 100,000 in Germany).

Last 5 posts by Robert Amsterdam

• Energy Blast - Nov 26, 2009 - November 26th, 2009
• Today in Russian Business - Nov 26, 2009 - November 26th, 2009
• RA's Daily Russian News Blast - Nov 26, 2009 - November 26th, 2009
• How to Earn Putin Points and Survive in Russian Business - November 25th, 2009
• Putin's Eye of the Tiger - November 25th, 2009