The construction works on the first line of the city train from Zelenikovo to the Skopje main railway station are coming to an end. The city train on this line will be put into operation from September, Macedonian Railways Infrastructure head Sinisha Ivanovski said in an interview with Prizma.mk.
“Currently, construction works are active from Zelenikovo to the main railway station, with a length of about 25 kilometers. This is an existing railway, part of corridor 10 and has been in operation for a long time, but not as it should be. The section is being reconstructed, the entire railway has been completely dismantled, part of the sleepers have been replaced with concrete ones, and the other part, towards Skopje, with new, wooden sleepers. We have been conducting tests and we believe that after the construction works are completely completed by the end of June, it will be possible to drive again at the designed 80 km/h, for passenger traffic. There will then be additional tests, but in principle, this urban train line should be fully operational by September,” said Ivanovski.
The construction part will be similar for the Ilinden and Gjorche Petrov section, adds the Macedonian Railways Infrastructure director.
“There is an existing railway in both places, but unlike the one from Zelenikovo, there is no traffic on these sections and they are in very poor condition. We have already announced a procedure for both projects, and if we manage to finish the design by September, there will immediately be an announcement for the selection of a contractor for both routes, so that we can start at the end of 2026 and finish them by the end of 2027.
In the budget review, we requested these funds to be in the development program, part in 2026, part in 2027 and maybe part in 2028 and we hope that they will be approved, the Government’s priority is to have an urban train,” noted Ivanovski.
