Tirana, Albania · Limited traffic zone
Official name Zona e “Ish bllokut”, zonë me trafik të kufizuar
The quarter that Tirana calls the "Ish blloku", the former block, is a limited traffic zone by decision of the city's municipal council. The instrument is a vendim of the Këshilli Bashkiak Tiranë dated 29 September 2008, made under the Albanian Road Code (Ligji nr. 8378, datë 22.07.1998), the local self-government law, the environmental protection law and the administrative offences law, on the mayor's proposal.
Point 1 designates the area of "Ish blloku" between bulevardi "Dëshmorët e Kombit" on the east, bulevardi "Bajram Curri" on the north, rruga "Abdyl Frashëri" on the north and rruga "Sami Frashëri" on the west as a zonë me trafik të kufizuar, and rolls it out in four phases: rruga "Ismail Qemali" between Dëshmorët e 4 Shkurtit and Vaso Pasha immediately, the rest of Ismail Qemali within 2008, the Brigada e VIII, Pjeter Bogdani and Nikolla Tupe segments by the end of 2009, and the whole area by the end of 2010.
Enforcement is physical: remote-controlled electronic bollards, with the city handling cases of unavoidable circulation inside the zone through lejekalime — passes — and the equipment needed to move. Three things the decision does not contain are as important as what it does. It sets no hours at all: the designation is not written against a clock, and no start or end time appears anywhere in it.
It sets no vehicle test — nothing about weight, age, emission class or purpose decides who is barred. And although it announces that "in all cases of violation, violators are fined as follows", the two amounts it then lists, 100,000 and 200,000 lekë, are both for damaging the remote control or the bollard, not for driving into the zone. What the city charges a driver who simply enters, if anything, is not in this act.
Two more limits belong on the face of this record. The decision is eighteen years old and its last phase was dated to the end of 2010, and Tirana publishes no later act amending or repealing it that we could find; and the zone's fourth side is missing from the text, which names an eastern, two northern and a western boundary and no southern one.
Bashkia Tiranë — Këshilli Bashkiak, vendim nr. 37, datë 29.09.2008 (indexed by the City as no. 38), served as a text PDF from the City's own register of council decisions
The decision creates no charge. Its instrument is a designation plus a barrier: the area is declared a zonë me trafik të kufizuar, electronic bollards are to be installed, and point 2 tells the City to handle unavoidable circulation inside it with lejekalime — passes — and the equipment needed to move.
There is no tariff, no counter and no price for a day inside the zone anywhere in the act, and point 1(c) says only that the relationship between the City and the users of the system will be fixed by a special contract for using the system, which is not published with the decision. Tirana's fiscal package — vendim nr.
158, datë 26.12.2019 "Për sistemin e taksave dhe tarifave vendore në qytetin e Tiranës", as amended, most recently by nr.
47 of 12 May 2026 — is the place a fee would appear, and we could not read it: the consolidated act is published as a Word 97 .doc, which is a format this project refuses to decode rather than guess at (D-202), and the 2026 amendment, which is a .docx and reads cleanly, contains no occurrence of "trafik" at all.
The decision states no hours. It is written as a designation of an area and a programme for installing bollards in it, and no time of day, day of week or season appears in any of its points — not for the zone as a whole and not for any of the four phases, whose dates are installation deadlines (immediately, within 2008, end of 2009, end of 2010) rather than operating windows.
So this record carries no timetable, and it does not infer one: a limited traffic zone that runs only in the evening and one that runs around the clock are both consistent with this text, and choosing between them would be our reading rather than the council's.
The area of "Ish blloku", which the decision fixes by naming the streets around it: bulevardi "Dëshmorët e Kombit" on the east, bulevardi "Bajram Curri" on the north, rruga "Abdyl Frashëri" on the north, and rruga "Sami Frashëri" on the west.
That is the council's own list and it has a gap this record does not fill: it gives an eastern side, two northern sides and a western side, and never says where the zone stops on the south.
The phased rollout inside it names further streets, and they are the best guide to the core: the segment of rruga "Ismail Qemali" between rruga "Dëshmorët e 4 Shkurtit" on the east and rruga "Vaso Pasha" on the west (phase one), the rest of Ismail Qemali east to bulevardi "Dëshmorët e Kombit" (phase two), and the segments of "Brigada e VIII", rruga "Pjeter Bogdani" and rruga "Nikolla Tupe" between the same two cross streets (phase three).
Phase four is the whole area again, to the end of 2010. No map, no coordinate list and no width of street is given anywhere in the act.
Bashkia Tiranë — Këshilli Bashkiak, point 1 of the vendim of 29.09.2008 and its four phases
No emission standard applies, to a petrol vehicle or to any other. The decision cites the environmental protection law in its preamble, but nothing in its operative text asks what a vehicle emits, how old it is or what it weighs: the question is whether a vehicle may pass a bollard, and the answer is decided by a pass, not by a class.
Albania has no national low-emission-zone framework for a municipal act to hang an emission class on.
Nor a diesel standard, and for the same reason. This is an access restriction on a district, enforced by a physical barrier, not an air-quality scheme that sorts vehicles.
The decision announces a fine schedule and then does not give one for entering.
Point 1 says that to secure the limited traffic zone remote-controlled electronic bollards are to be used and that "for all cases of violation, violators are fined as follows" — and the two levels that follow are both about the equipment: 100,000 lekë for damaging the remote control, payable by whoever holds it, on top of the cost of the damage; and 200,000 lekë for damaging the bollard or the other accessories of the system, again on top of the damage.
Neither is a penalty for driving into the zone, and quoting either as one would put a six-figure lek figure in front of a driver for something the council did not price. The act also cites Ligji nr. 7697, datë 07.04.1993 "Për kundërvajtjet administrative" in its preamble without naming an article or an amount, and the Albanian Road Code has its own penalty provisions that this decision does not reach for.
So there is no figure here, and none is estimated.
Bashkia Tiranë — Këshilli Bashkiak, the whole vendim of 29.09.2008: point 1 with its phases and fine levels, point 2 on passes, point 3 naming the implementing directorates
Bashkia Tiranë — Këshilli Bashkiak: the vendim "Mbi caktimin e zonës së 'Ish bllokut', si zonë me trafik të kufizuar", whose own heading reads nr. 37, datë 29.09.2008 while the City's register indexes it as no. 38. The register is one ahead of the document for this sitting, measured rather than assumed: the decision the register calls no. 37, on concessioning two underground car parks on the same date, reads nr. 36 in its own heading. Served as a text PDF, 149,147 bytes, two content streams, 3,570 characters of extractable text — a document, not a scan
Next scheduled re-check: 2026-12-20.
A city can run more than one scheme, and they do not always answer the same question.