Construction Begins on the Kichevo - Bukojchani Motorway: 11.5 Kilometres in Four Years, and "Toll-Free" Is Still Just a Promise

Ten years after it was designed, construction officially began on 12 October on the Kichevo - Bukojchani motorway section. These are the 11.5 missing kilometres between two other building sites: the Kichevo - Ohrid motorway and the Tetovo - Gostivar - Bukojchani route. Once everything is joined up, the trip from Skopje to Ohrid will, according to the announcements, take less than an hour and a half.

The key word is "once". The deadline for this section is four years.

Five bridges, a tunnel and 1,000 plots

The route runs through mountainous, technically difficult terrain. Deputy Prime Minister and Transport Minister Aleksandar Nikoloski lists five bridges and viaducts, a 370-metre tunnel, two interchanges, nine underpasses, four overpasses and six culverts. There will be two lanes plus an auxiliary lane in each direction, with speeds of 110 to 130 kilometres per hour.

The money comes from abroad: a 119-million-euro loan from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, a 20-million-euro grant from the European Union, and another 300,000 euros from the EU's Western Balkans fund for the tender documents. Koce Trajanovski, director of the Public Enterprise for State Roads, says around 1,000 cadastral plots need to be expropriated for the two phases. For the first 6.5-kilometre stretch, expropriation is 97% complete; for the remaining five kilometres, it hasn't started yet.

At the ceremony, Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski repeated that the goal is for Macedonia to become the crossroads of two pan-European corridors, 8 and 10, in roads, rail, energy and gas. Nikoloski, for his part, supplied the slogan of the day: "May it bring good luck - we're building Macedonia."

"Toll-free" - but which tolls?

The catchiest line of the day was Trajanovski's announcement that the new motorway will be toll-free. It sounds great, but so far no institution has explained what exactly it means. On the existing Skopje - Tetovo - Gostivar route, the Glumovo, Zhelino, Tetovo and Gostivar toll stations are already in operation, where a passenger car pays a total of 140 denars one way.

Will those stations be scrapped, or will the new sections simply not get new barriers of their own? Until there's an answer, "Skopje to Ohrid with no tolls" is an announcement, not a price list.

The speed of concrete

Then there are the deadlines on the neighbouring sites. The Kichevo - Ohrid motorway, one of the longest-running road projects in the country, is supposed to be fully operational in the first quarter of 2027, according to the Transport Ministry - and serious engineering problems on unstable ground are still being solved there. For the Tetovo - Gostivar and Gostivar - Bukojchani sections, being built by Bechtel and Enka, the date given is 2029.

Ceremonial first shovels are hardly rare. The measure of success is not the ceremony, but the day a driver reaches Ohrid in under 90 minutes - without paying a single denar at a toll booth.