Skopje's railway station - a symbol of decay, of neglect, and now of the latest phase of sudden renewal. The director of the state Railway Infrastructure company, Siniša Ivanovski, announced the start of a cleanup and restoration drive. Good news. The question is - why does it take political will for something that would be routine in a normal country?

All the advertising boards and lit signs have been removed. One is still standing - the tenant refuses to take it down, but has a seven-day ultimatum before the contract is terminated. Information posters, graffiti and accumulated grime are also being cleared. The reconstruction work will be carried out together with the Faculty of Architecture, and the structural analysis with IZIIS.

"The process won't be easy, but we're starting today," Ivanovski said. That's a sentence Macedonia has heard every three or four years about one building or another. Sometimes the work gets finished. Sometimes it stalls halfway. Skopje railway station is particular: it's the first contact with the city for many tourists and foreign visitors, and it's a workplace for around a hundred people - including a police station inside, whose chief Ivanovski says coordinates "daily."

Skopje railway station was built as a marvel of Yugoslav modernist architecture - designed by Kenzo Tange, the Japanese architect, after the 1963 earthquake. It's a significant piece of global architectural heritage. That it could decay to the point where you need a "seven-day deadline" to remove a single billboard - that says everything about administrative neglect.

The question is whether this time the project actually gets finished, and how long that takes. The Faculty of Architecture and IZIIS are serious institutions. If the authorities provide the budget and execute the plan without political obstruction, maybe in two years Skopje will have a station that isn't an embarrassment. After this many years of neglect, that is an acceptable ambition.