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Russia

Moscow Makes Big Plans To Ease Its Mega Traffic Woes

Ride the Moscow metro
Ride the Moscow metro
Ivan Buranov

MOSCOW - The traffic jams in Russia’s capital have become world-famous in the last several years, so bad that in 2010 the Federal Government decided to address the problem directly.

At the time, then-President Dimitri Medvedev commissioned a plan for the development of Moscow’s transportation system through the year 2020 that aims to get Muscovites and suburbanites to leave their cars at home and take suburban trains and light rail.

In the past two years, the city of Moscow has built 13 kilometers of new subway track and six new subway stations, bought 546 new subway cars, and created 700,000 new parking spots.

Minister of Transportation Maksim Sokolov says the project’s goal is not to make drivers’ lives easier, but rather to convert them to public transportation, particularly those who are coming into Moscow from outside of the city.

In particular, the city intends to develop current rail tracks that are used only for freight at the moment, so that they will be able to transport 285 million people per year by 2020. Unfortunately, the department is also facing budget shortfalls that may threaten the ambitious rail-development projects.

As a way to alleviate the traffic jams in the city, Sokolov is also proposing to limit trucks in the city limits. He said that nearly 30 percent of the vehicles on the Moscow Ring Road are trucks, and that nearly half of the trucks are not going to Moscow, but simply passing through on their way to another destination.

Moscow city authorities also announced late last month a new 34-kilometer pedestrian zone in the city center that is part of the city's attempts to make it more livable as well as more attractive to tourists. The areas will be turned into pedestrian-only zones by the end of this year; this will involve closing 14 kilometers of roads in the city center.

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Society

What's Spoiling The Kids: The Big Tech v. Bad Parenting Debate

Without an extended family network, modern parents have sought to raise happy kids in a "hostile" world. It's a tall order, when youngsters absorb the fears (and devices) around them like a sponge.

Image of a kid wearing a blue striped sweater, using an ipad.

Children exposed to technology at a very young age are prominent today.

Julián de Zubiría Samper

-Analysis-

BOGOTÁ — A 2021 report from the United States (the Youth Risk Behavior Survey) found that 42% of the country's high-school students persistently felt sad and 22% had thought about suicide. In other words, almost half of the country's young people are living in despair and a fifth of them have thought about killing themselves.

Such chilling figures are unprecedented in history. Many have suggested that this might be the result of the COVID-19 pandemic, but sadly, we can see depression has deeper causes, and the pandemic merely illustrated its complexity.

I have written before on possible links between severe depression and the time young people spend on social media. But this is just one aspect of the problem. Today, young people suffer frequent and intense emotional crises, and not just for all the hours spent staring at a screen. Another, possibly more important cause may lie in changes to the family composition and authority patterns at home.

Firstly: Families today have fewer members, who communicate less among themselves.

Young people marry at a later age, have fewer children and many opt for personal projects and pets instead of having children. Families are more diverse and flexible. In many countries, the number of children per woman is close to or less than one (Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong among others).

In Colombia, women have on average 1.9 children, compared to 7.6 in 1970. Worldwide, women aged 15 to 49 years have on average 2.4 children, or half the average figure for 1970. The changes are much more pronounced in cities and among middle and upper-income groups.

Of further concern today is the decline in communication time at home, notably between parents and children. This is difficult to quantify, but reasons may include fewer household members, pervasive use of screens, mothers going to work, microwave ovens that have eliminated family cooking and meals and, thanks to new technologies, an increase in time spent on work, even at home. Our society is addicted to work and devotes little time to minors.

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