Three and a half kilometres of new four-lane trunk road, meant to connect Vizbegovo faster to Blace and to Kosovo. The project for the Hasan Prishtina transit trunk road was presented today to business owners from the industrial zone in Vizbegovo by Cair mayor Izet Medziti and Skopje mayor Orce Gjorgjievski.

The meeting covered the expected benefits - better connectivity, relief for the existing street network, greater safety and more efficient movement of people and goods. The mayors heard the views and proposals of the companies operating in the zone.

"The Hasan Prishtina trunk road is a strategic project for Vizbegovo and for Skopje," Medziti said, noting that the city will get a faster and more functional link towards Blace and Kosovo.

One sentence determines everything

The presentation contains a detail worth lifting out of the middle of the announcement and putting at the top: work on the project will begin after the expropriation process is complete.

Which means that for now there is no start date, no deadline and no published value for the investment. There is a route, there is a presentation and there is agreement that the road is needed. Expropriation is the stage at which every infrastructure project in Macedonia either moves or stalls for years - depending on how many owners sit along the route and how quickly the state compensates them.

Why the zone wants this

Vizbegovo is an industrial zone with trucks passing through it to and from Blace every day. The existing street network was not built for that kind of traffic, which means slower transport and higher risk for everyone living along the route. Four lanes instead of a narrow street with mixed traffic is a real need, not an ornament.

That is exactly why presenting it to the business owners is a good move - they will be the first to feel the difference, but also the first to suffer while construction lasts. What is missing is the second meeting: with the people who live along the planned route and whose properties fall within the expropriation. About them, the announcement says nothing.