Kumanovo to Skopje by train for 87 denars: the price isn't new, the line isn't new - all that was missing was a decision

A one-way ticket from Kumanovo to Skopje costs 87 denars. Both ways - 140. A monthly pass for people commuting to work or university every day - 1,850 denars. Those are the figures presented by Deputy Prime Minister and Transport Minister Aleksandar Nikoloski, announcing more frequent trains on the Skopje-Kumanovo route.

Compare them with any other transport between the two cities and the arithmetic does itself. For 1,850 denars a month you travel every working day at under 90 denars a day, both directions. By car that is fuel for a little over half a week.

At the moment two trains a day run on the New Railway Station - Kumanovo route, as a pilot project. The ministry is working with Železnici Transport to raise the frequency. Nikoloski also noted that the Skopje urban train, launched a week ago, carried 1,500 passengers in three days, and he expects the figure to reach 100,000 before long.

"Trains are definitively the fastest means of communication, the cheapest and the most ecological," Nikoloski said, adding that with a car or a bus you know neither when you will arrive nor how heavy the traffic will be.

And here comes the part worth noting. If rail really is the fastest, cheapest and greenest option - why have only two trains a day been running between the country's second and first largest cities until now? The infrastructure has existed for decades. The line is not new. The price is not new. What was missing was somebody deciding to put the trains on it.

The same day Kumanovo also received five utility vehicles donated by the government through a World Bank procurement - two multifunctional cleaning vehicles, one water tanker and two street sweepers. Electric buses have been announced too.

The vehicles are welcome. But sweepers and tankers are a solution to a symptom. Trains are a solution to a problem. The difference will show in which of the two outlasts a single press conference.