The Municipality of Delčevo will pay 600,000 denars for a study to determine whether zonal parking can be introduced in the town. The deadline for producing it is 12 months.

Mayor Ivan Gocevski signed the contract with 24 ING from Bitola, selected as the most favourable bidder in the public tender. The amount does not include VAT.

What the study is supposed to deliver

The traffic study, with a preliminary traffic design and analysis, is meant to provide expert analysis and proposed solutions for organising parking, for the possibility of introducing zonal parking, and for improving the traffic regime in the central town area.

"By launching this procedure, the Municipality of Delčevo is taking a step toward regulating the parking regime and improving the organisation of traffic in the town, with the final solutions to be based on expert analysis and on the project documentation produced," the local authority says.

Gocevski put the goal more simply - for Delčevo to get a study offering solutions for better use of the limited space in the centre, for more orderly, safer and more functional traffic.

Twelve months for a town this size

This is worth pausing on. Delčevo is not Skopje, and the subject of the study is limited to the central town area. Even so, the time allowed for establishing where and how to park is a full calendar year.

If the whole deadline is used, the study will be ready in autumn 2027. Then comes adoption, then a decision on tariffs and zones, then implementation. Realistically, the first paid parking space is not expected within the term that is signing the contract.

That is not automatically a bad thing. A decision taken without documentation is a decision that falls apart easily later, and Delčevo evidently does not want to go down that road. But 600,000 denars and a year are an investment that ought to produce something more than a recommendation.

The measure of success

Zonal parking is not a project. It is a system that only works if there is charging, enforcement and consequence - and it collapses at the point where everyone realises no fine is coming.

The study will say how many spaces there are and how to lay them out. What no expert consultant can write down is whether the municipality will charge everyone, or only those without connections.