"Two galleries are fully finished, work on the third is intensive. We are opening another 10 kilometres of motorway to traffic soon," Deputy Prime Minister and Transport Minister Aleksandar Nikoloski wrote on Facebook, posting video from the construction site on the Kichevo - Ohrid motorway. The sentence has everything except one thing - a date.

That "soon" is the whole difference for the thousands of drivers who right now, in the middle of the tourist season, are travelling to Ohrid and Struga through diversions. No precise chainage was published, no exact start and end point, no calendar date for when the section will open. The public got a political announcement, not an operational map.

Where exactly the work is

Judging by the site visit location, the new section runs on the Kichevo end, from the area above Kichevo towards the entrance to the tunnels under Preseka. Along that stretch, three galleries, two bridges, a stabilised slope and the entrance to the tunnel system have been built or are under construction. The three galleries together are about 1.1 kilometres long. More broadly, eight protective galleries are planned from Kichevo to the tunnels, their job being to shield the alignment from unstable slopes, rockfalls and landslides - one of this project's main problems for years.

The tunnel under Preseka has two separate bores, one about two kilometres long, the other about 2.1. Once open, they should be the longest road tunnel bores in the country. At Botun the engineering solution is different: some of the works need to go up to 21 metres into the ground to secure the unstable slopes.

Numbers that do not match

This is where it gets awkward. During the site visit at Preseka it was stated that eight galleries are spread from Kichevo to the tunnel entrance, with another six galleries or similar systems planned at Botun. The Public Enterprise for State Roads, meanwhile, said in separate official information that six galleries and eight retaining walls are being built on the motorway.

This does not necessarily mean the figures contradict each other - they probably refer to different phases or construction fronts. But on a project worth hundreds of millions of euros, a citizen should not have to reconstruct from three statements whether six, eight or fourteen galleries are being built and where each of them is. A single public map marking all this does not exist.

The same problem applies to the mileage. The state roads enterprise says that in 2025, in three phases, 13.5, 12.34 and a further 2.12 kilometres were opened on the Vrbjani - Botun and Klimeshtani - Ohrid stretches, totalling 27.96 kilometres. In the latest announcement the minister said drivers are already using 34 kilometres. The six-kilometre difference was not explained.

Even after the new 10 kilometres, the machines stay

Alongside the construction, the Preseka pass and the Izvor - Vrbjani and Botun - Klimeshtani sections are being rehabilitated, 15.1 kilometres in total. That is a separate project worth around 6.5 million euros, with a completion deadline of October 2026. So even when the new kilometres open, the altered traffic regime is not going to disappear from this corridor.

The Automobile and Motorcycle Association reports again today that traffic on the Kichevo - Ohrid route is running with diversions due to construction work on several sections, recommending adjusted speed. What the daily bulletin does not contain is the exact start and end point of each diversion, or the expected additional travel time.

The Kichevo - Ohrid motorway will be good news the day it opens. Until then, the ask is modest: one updated map, one chainage, one date. If the project really is on schedule, those are three things that cost nothing to publish.