The rogue pedestrian crossing near Bit-Pazar is back on the agenda, and the mayor of the Čair municipality, Izet Medžiti, has floated two possible fixes: installing a traffic light, or completely demolishing the elevated footbridge that has sat unused for years.

"We are looking at two options. The most likely is installing a traffic light, and the other is to tear down the bridge, since it isn't fully functional and citizens don't use it," Medžiti said at a press conference. He recalled that the overpass has been out of use for years and is in poor shape due to vandalism, and that even before the local elections his position was that removal would be a better solution than reconstruction.

There's a small irony here worth noting. The ground-level crossing was put back into service at the request of Bit-Pazar merchants, for whom it matters for shopper foot traffic. So we have an overpass built specifically for people to cross safely above the traffic - which no one uses - and a ground-level crossing, right in the middle of the traffic, which everyone uses. The infrastructure and people's habits are heading in completely opposite directions.

The decision, the mayor says, is yet to be made. But the Bit-Pazar story is familiar across Skopje: bridges and crossings built without asking whether they'll be used at all, then left standing as monuments to bad planning. The question isn't just a traffic light or a demolition - it's why infrastructure people bypass from day one gets built in the first place. When you plan for the city, not for the habits of the people who live in it, the result is exactly this: an expensive structure collecting graffiti instead of footsteps.