Tomorrow, between 08:00 and 16:00, traffic on Pero Nakov Street will be fully suspended on the section where the railway level crossing sits, right next to the Madzari railway station. The public rail infrastructure company will be carrying out repair work on the crossing.

Eight hours of a closed street. The work is being carried out in coordination with the Skopje police and the city transport company. The City of Skopje and the Gazi Baba municipality are asking citizens to respect the traffic signage in place and the instructions of police officers, and to plan their journeys in good time.

Who is going to plan those journeys, and how

Pero Nakov is not a side street. It is an artery through the industrial part of Gazi Baba, carrying lorries, buses and daily traffic towards Madzari and beyond. An eight-hour closure on a Thursday is no small matter for the people who use it every day.

The notice arrived one day in advance. Technically, that is a notice. Whether it is enough for someone who has to get to work by bus tomorrow, or deliver goods by lorry, is another question.

Repairing a level crossing is not an emergency intervention - it is planned work. Planned work means the date was known for longer than twenty-four hours. The gap between when the institution knew and when the citizen found out is exactly what determines the value of the request to plan ahead.

A railway level crossing is also a place where safety is not an abstract topic. If the repair is needed, it should happen - and better now than after an incident. That should be said clearly.

One modest request remains: next time, let the schedule arrive a few days earlier, so that the appeal to plan ahead means something more than a polite formulation.