The municipality of Aerodrom has begun drawing up a project that will turn the streets Vladimir Komarov and Simeon Kavrakirov into one-way roads. The space freed up yields new parking spaces and cycle lanes.

The numbers: around 200 new spaces in Star Aerodrom and 215 in Michurin. A total of 415.

The logic of one-way streets

"The new regime will enable better and more efficient use of street space, with more organised vehicle movement and the creation of additional space for parking and for cycling", announced Aerodrom mayor Dejan Miteski.

The idea is not new - the local authority floated it back in August last year as a solution to the parking chaos in that part of the municipality. At the time it was announced that the lane carrying the one-way traffic would have a speed limit of 30 kilometres per hour.

That is an important detail. A one-way street with one lane for movement and one for parking naturally reduces speed, and 30 km/h is what the profession across Europe recommends for residential areas. It is safer for pedestrians and for children.

When?

Here comes the part anyone living in Michurin will read carefully. The deadline for drawing up the project is 30 days. The project then goes to the City of Skopje and to the interior ministry for the necessary approvals. Only after those can the new regime be introduced.

"The period for implementing the new traffic regime will depend on the further procedure and on obtaining the necessary approvals from the competent institutions", the municipality of Aerodrom says.

In other words: there is no date.

415 spaces against how many cars?

This is the question no announcement has answered. The parking chaos in Michurin and Star Aerodrom is not a phenomenon that appeared yesterday - these are neighbourhoods built at a time when a family had one car, if it had one at all.

Four hundred and fifteen new spaces is a real figure and it is not small. But whether it is enough depends on something nobody has published: how many vehicles actually park on those streets overnight today.

If the answer is that there are still not enough, then the one-way regime will be an improvement but not a solution - and residents will know it on the first evening they come home.

Until then, what exists is a project. Thirty days to draw it up, then however long the approvals take.