Bosnia and Herzegovina: 1 scheme to know about before you drive in.
Sarajevo has one driving restriction on our books: the Pješačke zone i ulice zabranjene za odvijanje saobraćaja u Kantonu… (limited traffic zone). What is a limited traffic zone?
Sources last read on 2026-09-16, from the authorities' own pages. The next scheduled check is 2027-01-20.
Sarajevo's restricted zone is a permission, not a price, and the permission is issued by the canton rather than by the city.
Chapter VI of the Zakon o uređenju saobraćaja na području Kantona Sarajevo is headed 'Zone sa ograničenim saobraćajem motornih vozila', and Article 43 as it stands after the 2021 amendment says the whole of it in one sentence: in pedestrian zones, or in streets closed to traffic, vehicles may exceptionally move and stand only where that has been allowed by a rješenje of the Ministry — the Ministarstvo saobraćaja Kantona Sarajevo.
There is no free hour and no grace period. The permit is applied for on a named form, it is issued for the current calendar year at longest, and it comes with an iskaznica, an identity card for the vehicle that the traffic police may take away and that is then refused for the rest of the year if the conditions on it are abused.
Article 44 lists who may ask: cleaning and waste collection, utility maintenance, pest control, electrical and telecoms work, supply of shops, markets, restaurants and hotels, delivery of gas and firewood, furniture removals, building materials and construction waste, money and post, state, cantonal, city and religious protocol, religious events, event and broadcast equipment, transport of disabled and sick people, undertakers, security firms, embassy cars, residents who own a garage or a yard used for parking inside those streets, official vehicles of state, entity, cantonal and local bodies, and anything else where the applicant proves the case.
Three limits bound what a permit can buy. The vehicle's maximum mass may not exceed 3,500 kg, except that electric-traction vehicles up to 2,000 kg with a trailer up to 600 kg on soft tyres may be allowed, and heavier goods vehicles only in specially justified cases and with the pavement physically protected.
Speed inside a pedestrian zone may not exceed walking pace — the 2021 amendment replaced the earlier figure of 10 km/h with that phrase, so a driver who reads the 2017 text alone reads a number that no longer exists. And the maximum time the vehicle may stand is not in the statute at all: the rješenje itself sets it. Two things a driver of an ordinary car should know.
First, no permit is needed by a vehicle with right of way under Article 126 of the national road-safety act — ambulance, fire, police. Second, this scheme reads the vehicle's mass and the driver's errand; it never reads the engine. There is no Euro class, no fuel test and no age limit anywhere in it.
The fine for driving in without the rješenje is a range rather than a figure: 50 KM to 250 KM for the driver, set by Article 105 as replaced in 2022. Where the zones are is the part this record cannot draw. The statute does not name a street: Article 42 leaves the prohibitions and restrictions to the Ministry to prescribe, and they reach the driver on a traffic sign.
The one a visitor actually meets is the Baščaršija core of Općina Stari Grad, closed by retractable bollards, and Article 44(4) makes that a two-key lock — the Ministry's rješenje plus the prior consent of the municipality's own services.