Between the village of Lojane and Tabanovce, where the railway line cuts across the regional road, there is no barrier. The train passes several times a day and sounds its horn to prevent an accident. That is the entire protection - a horn and the hope that the driver hears it in time.

The two signals placed beside the tracks are so outdated that drivers can barely spot them. And a wide bend on the approach keeps the train invisible until it is close.

What the residents say

Residents of Lojane say there have been several accidents at this critical point over the years and they keep asking for modern signalling with a proper barrier, especially since the crossing sits just a few metres from the Tabanovce railway station.

„It bothers us as residents, but others too, not just us - especially the people of Lojane, because everyone passes through here. There is no barrier! Sometimes you can barely see the signs!” says one of them.

Another describes the most ordinary way infrastructure disappears: „Whatever they install does not last a week and then it is gone.”

Some residents say they look after the road and the signage in the area themselves: „There were no signs, and there were a lot of potholes down there, so we residents filled them in ourselves. They dug up the asphalt for a cable by the railway and never repaired it, so we put the cement in ourselves. They did nothing - we residents did it on our own initiative, like many other things. We clean the road ourselves.”

The village has around 2,000 inhabitants.

The answer that explains the whole situation

The public enterprise Railways - Infrastructure says that until the design for a full reconstruction of that railway section is produced, no barrier is planned for this crossing.

The reasoning is the crucial part: according to them, railway engineers did not categorise the crossing as a critical infrastructure point, given that there is no heavy traffic of vehicles or pedestrians there. The enterprise urges people to respect the existing signalling, which it considers sufficient for safe crossing. In the longer term, they say, barriers could possibly be installed.

So the criterion is traffic volume. Not visibility, not the bend, not the proximity of a station - but how many vehicles pass.

By that logic, a crossing used by fewer people is automatically safer. That holds only if an accident is measured by the number of people exposed, rather than by the consequence for whoever happens to be on the tracks that day.

„Longer term” and „possibly” in the same answer mean there is no barrier in the plan. The residents who put the cement in the potholes themselves probably understand that better than anyone.