Skopje's city train carries 300 to 500 passengers a day, and Nikoloski counts them as just as many fewer cars in town

Between 300 and 500 passengers a day. That, according to Deputy Prime Minister and Transport Minister Aleksandar Nikoloski, is how many people ride the city train on the Zelenikovo - New Railway Station line, which started on 1 September, on the promised date. Nikoloski immediately turned the figure into a win against pollution: "That's 300 to 500 fewer vehicles in the city centre. That's 300 to 500 more free parking spaces."

The maths is prettier than reality. A passenger is not a car. Some of those 300 to 500 people may have driven before, while others may have taken the bus, a minibus or the passenger seat of someone else's car. How many vehicles have actually disappeared from the centre, nobody has measured - at least not publicly. The train is welcome, but 500 passengers a day in a city of around half a million people is not a turning point. It's a start.

Where the cars come from

Nikoloski gave the wider picture himself: around 30 percent of traffic enters Skopje from the western Tetovo - Gostivar direction, 30 percent from Veles, and around 20 percent each from Kumanovo and the Pristina direction. Two more city train lines are being designed, and a city train for Kumanovo has been announced too. An intercity Pristina - Skopje train, the minister says, is certain - if the Kosovo side rebuilds the track.

150 electric buses, when Skopje asked for 250

The second trump card is electric buses. The procurement covers 150 buses, and the first ones, according to Nikoloski, will arrive in January, even though the contract signed in early September sets a six-month delivery deadline. Skopje asked for 250 buses, and municipalities outside Skopje for 89. Kumanovo, Štip, Strumica, Gevgelija, Kavadarci, Prilep, Bitola, Ohrid, Gostivar and Tetovo will also get buses. "That's what the budget allowed," the minister said.

Responding to civil society concerns about the procurement price, Nikoloski said the comparisons were "an attempt at manipulation" because they put electric buses side by side with compressed-gas ones, and added that Zagreb had bought only 62 electric buses for a similar sum. Maybe so. But when criticism is dismissed as "manipulation" rather than answered with published figures for the price per bus, citizens are left with nothing but the minister's word. In Skopje, where every winter is a running count of how polluted the air is, the real test won't be the press conference - it will be whether the buses are actually on the streets in January.