Kilometre-long queues stretching to OHIS, crawling traffic and frayed nerves behind the wheel. For residents of Dracevo, Zelenikovo and Studenicani this is not one unlucky day - it is a daily routine that has lasted years, and at rush hour the queues run the entire length of the approach into this part of Skopje.

Skopje Mayor Orce Gjorgjievski announced that the asphalting is finally getting close. According to the City of Skopje, the route has been cleared, new storm drainage has been laid, and the sub-base is finished on one side, after which the first layer of asphalt follows. The stretch is around 850 metres, from the substation in Pintija to the roundabout in Dracevo, with four traffic lanes and a pedestrian and cycle path.

Three months or thirty years

The wording used to announce this deserves attention. "After three decades of empty promises, in just over three months we solved the problems that were holding up construction," Gjorgjievski said in a video on his profile, adding that this has been an ordeal for more than 100,000 citizens.

The three-month figure is accurate for his term. The problem is that the same mayor claimed back in May that work was moving faster than planned and that around 88 percent of the job was done at that point. Almost three months later, the start of the asphalting is being announced. So it took three months to get from 88 percent to the first layer of asphalt - on a stretch 850 metres long.

The first section of this same boulevard, from Rampa to the junction with Narodni Heroi, 1,380 metres long, was completed in October 2012. Fourteen years and four mayors later, the rest is still not finished.

What residents saw on the ground

While the announcements keep coming, photographs from the stretch itself show something else - signs put up, a closure, and no activity on site. No workers, no machinery. Just a narrowed boulevard and a queue.

Since yesterday the reconstruction of the main bridge over the Markova Reka in Dracevo has started up again as well, which means those same drivers got another bottleneck on the same route, at the same time.

Nobody in Dracevo disputes that the boulevard needs finishing. The question is a different one: why did the 88 percent announcement come in May while the asphalt arrives in August - and how many more such announcements will there be before an 850-metre stretch actually opens.