Eight hundred and fifty metres. That is the length of the stretch from the substation in Pintija to the roundabout in Dracevo, which for years has been one of the main bottlenecks at the southern entrance to Skopje.

These days asphalt is finally arriving on it. Skopje mayor Orce Gjorgjievski announced it with a sentence worth taking apart: "After three decades of empty promises, in just over three months we solved the problems that were holding up construction of Boris Trajkovski boulevard and creating a daily ordeal for more than 100,000 citizens."

What has actually been finished

According to information from the City of Skopje, the route has been fully cleared, new storm drainage has been built, and on one side the road base has been compacted. The next step is asphalting. The project provides for four traffic lanes and a pedestrian and cycle path.

In parallel, reconstruction has begun on the main bridge over the Markova Reka in Dracevo.

That is concrete progress and there is no reason to belittle it. The boulevard is one of the main links between Kisela Voda, Pintija and Dracevo, and its unfinished widening created congestion for years at one of the busiest entrances to the city.

Where the real story is - and it isn't in those three months

One of the main problems blocking the work was unfinished expropriation of property along the route. In February the City announced an agreement had been reached with owners and businesses. In May the section was broken through and around 610 metres of storm drainage laid.

So what cost three decades was neither the machines, nor the asphalt, nor the money. It was an agreement with the landowners.

That is an admission no press release phrases this way, but it follows directly from the chronology: the section sat unresolved for decades because nobody completed the expropriation. Once it was completed, six months passed from the February agreement to asphalt in August.

"We promised and we're delivering" - and then?

The mayor ended his post with that sentence, which is normal political language ahead of local elections. Fair enough - a man has the right to announce work finished on his watch.

But "we will shortly begin laying the first layer of asphalt" is an important formulation. First layer. The base has been compacted on one side. So this isn't the end of construction, but the start of its final phase - and it is precisely in that phase that Skopje projects historically tend to stall over the winter.

A hundred thousand people use this route every day. They will judge the project not by photographs of the asphalting, but by whether in November they are driving on four lanes or on one layer of asphalt waiting for spring.