Zelenikovo to Skopje in 25 Minutes: The City Train Gets Praise in a Facebook Video - But How Many Passengers It Carries, Nobody Says

Twenty-five minutes from Zelenikovo to Skopje's central railway station. That, according to passengers, is how long the city train takes, and speed is the main reason they're happy. The praise didn't come from a survey or an institutional report, but from a video posted on the Facebook channel "Da te prašam nešto" ("Let Me Ask You Something"), in which residents talk about their experience with rail travel.

The video then became news. A story about it appeared on several portals in almost identical form, with the same sentences and the same order of facts. Who is behind the channel, the published stories don't say.

The details on offer are useful. The route covers the stations Zelenikovo Novo, Orešani, Jane Sandanski, Dračevo and Lisiče, ending at the main station. The trip takes about 25 minutes in either direction, depending on departure. The timetable is synced with the JSP Skopje bus schedule, so a passenger getting off the train can hop straight onto a bus to work or school.

What's missing from every one of those stories is the number that says the most: how many people actually ride the train. A few satisfied people in front of a camera make a nice picture, but they aren't data. If the line really works well, why is nobody publishing ridership figures - and why does the praise arrive through a video on a Facebook channel?

The "City Train" project is meant to be bigger than this one line. A second section is planned from Miladinovci via Ilinden and Madžari to the central station, and a third is supposed to link the central station with Skopje North, Gjorče Petrov and Volkovo. No deadline for either is mentioned in the stories.

The video shows that people already riding this line are happy with the speed, and that's good news. But a railway is built on timetables and numbers, not on videos of passengers saying they're having a nice time.