17 schemes in 13 cities. Every figure comes from an official source and is re-checked.
Brazil has 17 driving restrictions that we have checked against an official source, in 13 cities. They are 14 heavy vehicle bans, 1 public transport lane, 1 limited traffic zone and 1 number-plate driving ban.
This page lists no country-wide requirement for Brazil. Anything owed before you reach a city is not covered here, so check the national road authority before you leave.
The sources for this country were read between 2026-09-13 and 2026-09-14, from the authorities' own pages. Each check is repeated on a schedule, and a rule we can no longer confirm comes down instead of staying up.
| Scheme | City | Kind | Fine |
|---|---|---|---|
| Restrição à circulação de veículos de carga na área central e em corredores de tráfego (Portaria BHTRANS DPR nº 138/2009, alterada pelas Portarias BHTRANS DPR nº 077/2014 e nº 004/2019) | Belo Horizonte | Heavy vehicle ban | not in our sources |
| Área de restrição de circulação do Anel de Integração Engenheiro Rebouças | Campinas | Heavy vehicle ban | 130.16 BRL |
| Restrição à circulação de veículos de carga na Região Urbana do Centro | Campo Grande | Heavy vehicle ban | not in our sources |
| Circulação de veículos de carga na Zona da Área Central (ZAC) e na Zona de Restrição Máxima (ZRM) | Cuiabá | Heavy vehicle ban | not in our sources |
| Restrição ao tráfego de veículos de carga na BR 476 (Linha Verde), Km 120,9 a Km 142,8 — Portaria SMDT nº 11, de 18 de fevereiro de 2022 | Curitiba | Heavy vehicle ban | not in our sources |
| Zona Central de Tráfego — restrição à circulação de veículos acima de 7,0 toneladas ou 7,0 metros (Decreto Municipal nº 934, de 11 de setembro de 1997, artigos 2º, 8º e 10) | Curitiba | Heavy vehicle ban | not in our sources |
| Proibição de circulação de Veículos Pesados Tipo CTV (caminhões cegonha) no Perímetro Urbano de Goiânia | Goiânia | Heavy vehicle ban | not in our sources |
| Zona de Restrição de Tráfego I (ZRT I) | Goiânia | Heavy vehicle ban | not in our sources |
| Zona Máxima de Restrição (ZMR) | Manaus | Heavy vehicle ban | 195.23 BRL |
| Proibição do trânsito de caminhões nas vias de tráfego intenso | Natal | Heavy vehicle ban | not in our sources |
| Restrição da circulação de caminhões no Centro Histórico | Porto Alegre | Heavy vehicle ban | not in our sources |
| Zona Urbana de Restrição (ZUR) de circulação de veículos de carga e de operação de serviço de carga e descarga | Porto Velho | Heavy vehicle ban | not in our sources |
| Faixa Azul | Recife | Public transport lane | 243.47 BRL |
| Áreas de Restrição Centro Histórico | Salvador | Limited traffic zone | not in our sources |
| Áreas de Restrição de Circulação (ARC) | Salvador | Heavy vehicle ban | 130.16 BRL |
| Rodízio Municipal — Programa de Restrição ao Trânsito de Veículos Automotores (Decreto nº 58.584 de 20 de dezembro de 2018) | São Paulo | Number-plate driving ban | not in our sources |
| Zona de Máxima Restrição de Circulação — ZMRC (Decreto nº 56.920, de 8 de abril de 2016; limites e horários fixados pela Portaria nº 137/18-SMT.GAB, alterada pela Portaria nº 154/18-SMT.GAB) | São Paulo | Heavy vehicle ban | 130.16 BRL |
Belo Horizonte keeps heavy goods vehicles out of its central districts for most of the working day, and keeps articulated ones out altogether.
The test is the vehicle rather than what it emits: a goods vehicle whose capacidade de carga — its rated load capacity — is over 5.5 tonnes, or which is longer than 6.50 m, may neither drive through nor load and unload in the Área Central, which BHTRANS names as the Hipercentro, Savassi, Lourdes, Assembleia/Barro Preto and Hospitalar, nor on Av. Nossa Senhora do Carmo.
There it is barred from 07:00 to 20:00 Monday to Friday and from 07:00 to 15:00 on Saturday. Carretas and caminhões-trator — articulated units and tractor cabs — are barred from that same area at every hour of every day, Sunday included. On the corridors that feed the centre, a closed list of named avenue segments, both classes are barred 07:00–09:00 and 17:00–20:00 on weekdays and 07:00–09:00 on Saturday.
Two one-way stretches of Av. do Contorno, the pair BHTRANS calls the tobogã, are closed to both classes around the clock. Below the threshold nothing applies: a vehicle of at most 5.5 t load capacity and no more than 6.50 m long circulates and loads freely at any hour in every one of these places, and so does any car, van or motorcycle.
There is nothing to pay and no day pass to buy. The only way through for a vehicle that is over the limit is an Autorização Especial para Trânsito de Veículo, which BHTRANS grants in advance and at its own discretion for exceptional cases — indivisible loads, special vehicles — against a stated address and stated hours.
Campinas keeps goods vehicles out of its centre by length rather than by weight, and the line is low: a lorry more than 6.3 metres long may not circulate inside the Anel de Integração Engenheiro Rebouças from 06:00 to 20:00 Monday to Friday, or from 06:00 to 14:00 on Saturday. Sunday is untouched.
The ring is a real orbital road round the central districts, and the municipality describes it as the twenty public roads that make it up rather than as a shape — Doutor Abelardo Pompeu do Amaral round through Heitor Penteado, Andrade Neves, Joaquim Vilac and Barão de Monte Alegre — so the area is a list of edges here, as it is in Goiânia.
6.3 metres is short enough that this is not only a heavy-lorry rule: it is the length of the Veículo Urbano de Carga class the municipality itself defines, so the scheme starts exactly where the urban delivery van ends, and a two-axle rigid truck is normally inside it.
The rule is written into Resolução nº 079/2017 of the Secretaria Municipal de Transportes, amended by Resolução nº 349/2019, and neither text is obtainable: the municipal legal library, the transparency portal and the gazette's own full-text search all accept no connection from us, and the traffic authority's website answers "Attack blocked by web application protection".
What the municipality does publish, on a host that answers, is what the rule says — its own service catalogue names the resolution, its articles and its annex, and two press releases from the enforcing agency state the threshold and both timetables word for word. Since 18 August 2025 the rule has had cameras behind it.
EMDEC turned two existing speed and red-light sites into lorry detectors, on Avenida Prestes Maia before Avenida Prefeito Faria Lima and on Avenida Brasil at Avenida Barão de Itapura, both inbound, and it cross-checks every plate against the permit database rather than the vehicle register.
Five months of that produced 563 citations, which the authority published in January 2026 — 357 between August and December 2025 and 206 in January alone. The breach is priced by the publisher itself: a médium-class infraction under the federal traffic code, R$ 130,16 and four licence points.
The way through, if your trade is on the list, is a permit called the ACC or the ACM, bought for 8.85 fiscal units — R$ 45,13 in 2026 — through EMDEC's Observa system, and it does not buy the whole day: an authorised lorry gets 09:00 to 16:00 on weekdays and 06:00 to 09:00 on Saturday.
Penalty 130.16 BRL
Campo Grande draws two rings round its centre and sorts lorries by what they weigh.
Inside the Área de Restrição (AR), the outer ring, a Caminhão Simples of 10.1 to 16 tonnes is barred 06:00–08:00 and 17:30–20:00 on weekdays and 06:00–09:00 on Saturday; a Caminhão Truck of 16.1 to 24 tonnes loses the middle of the day as well, 11:00–14:00; and an articulated heavy vehicle over 16 tonnes is barred for the whole working day, 06:00–20:00, and until 15:00 on Saturday.
Inside the Área de Restrição Máxima (ARM), the inner ring, every one of those windows is longer, and the articulated vehicle starts an hour earlier at 05:00. Sundays and public holidays are free in both rings, in the decree's own words. Anything at or under 3,500 kg may go anywhere at any hour, and so may a Veículo Urbano de Carga up to 10 tonnes within 2.20 m by 7.20 m.
One street is treated on its own: no vehicle over 3,500 kg at all may use Rua 14 de Julho between Avenida Fernando Corrêa da Costa and Avenida Mato Grosso without written permission, at any hour of any day. This is a new scheme rather than a long-standing one. Decreto n.
16.664 was signed on 17 June 2026, published in DIOGRANDE n. 8.374 on 1 July 2026, took effect that day by its own Art. 12, and revoked the 2010 decree that governed lorry movement before it. ⚠️ Two things about it are unresolved and neither is hidden here.
The agency that wrote it says on its own page that enforcement will be preceded by an educational period of orientation and publicity, and it gives that period no end date — so the rule is in force while the date it starts costing money is unpublished. And the decree calls its own measures "de caráter administrativo, operacional e experimental". Nothing here is priced: Art.
10 sends a breach to "as penalidades previstas na legislação federal de trânsito" without naming an article of the Código de Trânsito Brasileiro, an infraction class, a sum or a licence point, so this record carries no fine — unlike São Paulo, Salvador, Recife, Manaus or Campinas, where the authority printed the class and the amount itself.
Cuiabá sorts lorries by gross weight and by which of three areas they are in, and it has done so since 2011. In the Zona da Área Central (ZAC), outside the inner ring, a vehicle of 16 to 24 tonnes gross may drive and load only 08:00–12:00, 14:00–17:30 and 20:00–06:00, with Saturdays open from 08:00; anything above 24 tonnes may only move 20:00–06:00.
In the Zona de Restrição Máxima (ZRM), the inner ring that covers the listed historic centre, a 16-to-24-tonne vehicle is down to 20:00–06:00 and anything above 24 tonnes is banned outright, "em qualquer dia e horário". Handcarts and animal- or motor-drawn carts may work in the ZRM only 20:00–06:00.
On corridors 1, 2 and 3 and in the rest of the urban area, vehicles up to 24 tonnes are free at any hour and the heaviest are confined to 20:00–06:00 on working days and Saturdays from 14:00.
Nine roads and areas are open to everything at every hour, among them the BR-364 stretch, the Rodovia dos Imigrantes and Avenida Miguel Sutil between Rua Barão de Melgaço and the Ponte Nova. ⚠️ Three things about this scheme need saying plainly.
First, the law leaves a hole it never fills: every one of the three area rules jumps from "até 10 (dez) toneladas" to "de 16 (dezesseis) toneladas até 24 (vinte e quatro) toneladas", and a vehicle between 10 and 16 tonnes gross is named nowhere. The numerals are spelled out in words as well as digits in the publisher's own text, so this is the law and not a transcription slip.
Second, the instrument is fifteen years old and its own authority said in August 2024 that it needs updating: the Secretária Municipal de Mobilidade Urbana set up a commission to analyse it and draft an amendment, giving it sixty days. No amendment has been published since — measured, not assumed. Third, nothing here is priced for a circulation breach.
The law sends those to the Código de Trânsito Brasileiro without naming an article or a sum, and the one figure it does print — R$ 50,00 per tonne for loading or unloading out of hours — has been subject to compulsory annual inflation indexation since 2012 and no updated figure has ever been published.
Curitiba closes its main north–south expressway to heavy lorries at the two weekday peaks. The BR 476 crosses the city as the Linha Verde, and between kilometre 120.9 and kilometre 142.8 no goods vehicle with a Peso Bruto Total over 10 tonnes may use it on a working day between 07:00 and 09:00 or between 17:00 and 19:00.
That is the whole rule: no charge, no permit to buy, no registration, and nothing at all outside those four hours. The measure is gross combined weight rather than payload, so a goods vehicle at or under 10 tonnes PBT is never caught, and neither is a car, a van, a motorcycle or a coach.
The exemptions are narrow and are for vehicles attending an incident on the stretch: official vehicles, public-service vehicles, fire, rescue, police, traffic enforcement and ambulances, public-utility vehicles under CONTRAN Resolution 268/2008, and breakdown recovery.
This is a municipal portaria on a federal road, which is unusual and is the reason it exists: the federal highway police delegated traffic authority over this stretch to the city, and the city then legislated for it. It is a separate scheme from the lorry ban in Curitiba's central area, which runs on different hours over a different area and a different threshold; a driver crossing the city can meet both.
Curitiba closes the whole of its central area to large goods vehicles through the working day. The decree draws a closed perimeter of named streets around the centre, calls it the Zona Central de Tráfego, and bars vehicles over 7.0 tonnes or over 7.0 metres long from circulating inside it from 09:00 to 19:00 Monday to Friday and from 09:00 to 13:30 on Saturday.
Sunday and public holidays are outside it at every hour, and so is every hour outside those windows — the decree says in terms that the weekend release it grants covers "o sábado, domingo e feriados". Below the threshold nothing applies: a van, a car or a goods vehicle at or under both limits drives in freely at any hour. There is nothing to pay and no permit to buy in advance for ordinary traffic.
Loading and unloading is regulated separately and more tightly by the same decree: inside the perimeter a goods vehicle between 1.8 and 7.0 tonnes may load and unload only in marked loading bays and only between 19:30 and 08:30 on weekdays, and one between 7.0 and 14.0 tonnes only between 19:30 and 07:30 — so a lorry that is under the circulation threshold can still be out of time for the delivery itself.
The only way past either rule for a vehicle that exceeds the stated capacities and hours is an authorisation granted in advance for a stated address and stated hours, which the city issues through its Portal Autorização de Trânsito against a fee.
Goiânia keeps car transporters out of the entire city at the three busiest parts of every weekday.
Article 4 of Portaria nº 224/2011 - AMT, as replaced in 2013, bans "Veículos Pesados Tipo CTV – Combinações para Transporte de Veículos, Caminhões Cegonha" longer than 14 metres from the whole Perímetro Urbano de Goiânia from Monday to Friday between 07:00 and 09:00, between 11:00 and 14:00 and between 17:00 and 19:00 — with one carve-out, the state and federal highways that cut across the municipality, which stay open at every hour.
This is not the city's central lorry zone and it should not be read as part of it: the Zona de Restrição de Tráfego I is a bounded perimeter in the Setor Central and runs a single 07:00–19:00 window against weight and length, while this rule is city-wide, applies to one named vehicle type, and lets a cegonha work the two gaps in between — 09:00 to 11:00 and 14:00 to 17:00 — everywhere except inside that zone.
The threshold is the municipality's second attempt: the 2011 portaria banned every CTV combination regardless of length, and Portaria nº 70/2013 - SMT narrowed it to those over 14 metres, which made the rule more permissive rather than less.
The price of a breach is the one thing this record cannot give: article 8 sends it to article 187 of the Brazilian traffic code and states no sum, so the penalty here is null with a note rather than a figure taken out of the national table.
That the rule still binds is settled by the mayor himself — a veto message of 15 July 2025 names Portaria nº 224 of 2011, nº 70 of 2013 and nº 21 of 2015 as the municipal rules that govern heavy-vehicle traffic and its hours and routes, and strikes down a bill for disregarding them.
Goiânia closes a bounded piece of its centre to lorries for the whole working day.
Inside the Zona de Restrição de Tráfego I — the area enclosed by the fourteen public roads the municipality lists in Anexo I of Portaria nº 224/2011 - AMT, running from Avenida Independência and Rua 68 in the Setor Central round through Alameda dos Buritis, the Setor Sul and the Setor Leste Universitário — a lorry over 8.30 tonnes gross or over 8.0 metres long may not circulate between 07:00 and 19:00, Monday to Friday.
Outside those hours, and at any hour on a Saturday or Sunday, the rule says nothing. The thresholds are the municipality's second attempt at them: the 2011 portaria set the weight line at 7.0 tonnes, and Portaria nº 70/2013 - SMT raised it to 8.30 while leaving the 8.0 metres and the 07:00–19:00 window untouched.
"Tonnes" is defined in the instrument itself as Peso Bruto Total, tare plus maximum payload, so it is what the vehicle may weigh rather than what it happens to be carrying.
The way out is not a payment but an exemption list that the authority wrote into the rule: urban goods vehicles up to 7.0 t and 8.0 m, emergency and utility work, tow trucks, the post, refuse collection and valuables transport may run at any hour, while concrete, crane lorries, spoil removal, house moves and perishable food get the middle of the day, 08:00 to 16:00. What this record cannot tell a driver is the price.
Article 8 of the portaria sends a breach to article 187 of the Brazilian traffic code and stops there — it names the article and never states a sum — so the penalty here is null with a note rather than a figure we looked up ourselves.
What is unusually well settled is whether the rule still binds: on 15 July 2025 the mayor of Goiânia vetoed a bill in the city's own gazette on the ground that it disregarded "a Lei nº 9.028, de 2011, e as Portarias nº 224, de 2011, nº 70, de 2013, e nº 21, de 2015", which he described as the rules that govern heavy-vehicle traffic, its hours, its routes and its restriction zones.
That is the head of the executive naming this exact chain of instruments, in force, fourteen months before we read it.
Manaus keeps heavy goods vehicles off its main central avenues for most of the working day, and it sorts them by gross weight on two different clocks.
The Instituto Municipal de Mobilidade Urbana (IMMU), the municipal traffic authority, states the rule in its own words: a vehicle whose Peso Bruto Total is over 8 tonnes may not circulate between 06:00 and 09:00 or between 17:00 and 20:00, and a lorry over 16 tonnes may not circulate between 09:00 and 17:00, Monday to Friday.
Read together, the two windows join up: anything over 16 tonnes is shut out from 06:00 to 20:00 without a break, while a vehicle between 8 and 16 tonnes loses only the two peaks and may work the middle of the day. Outside those hours, and at any hour on a Saturday or Sunday, the IMMU states nothing restricts the zone.
The way out is a permit rather than a payment — an Autorização Especial de Tráfego, applied for in person at the IMMU's counter on Avenida Urucará and granted or refused by its engineering directorate — and the way it goes wrong is priced by the authority itself: a grave infraction under the federal traffic code, R$ 195,23, five licence points and retention of the vehicle.
What this record does not have is an instrument. No decree or portaria for the ZMR is obtainable through any channel the municipality offers, and that is measured rather than assumed.
What stands in its place is the publisher saying so repeatedly, recently and in the present tense, and counting its own enforcement while it does: 202 citations in 2023, 554 in 2024, an operation on Avenida Mário Ypiranga Monteiro in March 2026 that cited 24 lorries in a morning, and a July 2026 consultation paper that opens by stating the zone is already in force before proposing to extend it.
Penalty 195.23 BRL
Natal does not close an area to lorries; it closes five avenues. Heavy vehicles and lorries weighing more than 5 tonnes may not drive, stop or park on Avenida Senador Salgado Filho and its continuation Avenida Hermes da Fonseca, Avenida Prudente de Morais, Avenida Bernardo Vieira, Avenida Coronel Estevam or Avenida Rio Branco, from 05:00 to 20:00, Monday to Friday.
Those are the arterial spines of the south and centre of the city, so the rule is narrow on a map and hard to avoid in practice.
The Veículo Urbano de Carga is excluded outright, and lorries carrying perishable food, running an emergency, doing essential public works or on a short list of local jobs — press, hospital gases, LPG, breakdown recovery, concrete mixers and pumps, removals — are excepted, but the excepted ones must still stay under 8 tonnes, 2.20 metres wide and 7 metres long, and all except the emergency vehicles need prior authorisation from the transport authority. ⚠️ The weight figure is contested by the city's own instruments and this record encodes the stricter one.
The scheme was created by Lei Promulgada nº 0256/2008 at 5 tonnes and 05:00–20:00 on weekdays, and made real seven years later by Decreto nº 10.670 of 24 April 2015, which is the only text that ever names the five avenues.
Then in June 2016 the city council amended the law itself to bar lorries over 8 tonnes at two peaks only, 06:00–09:00 and 17:00–20:00, and instructed the transport authority to define the streets afresh by decree within 120 days.
No such decree was ever published: the gazette's own full-text index, searched over its whole 2003–2026 run, returns the phrase "tráfego intenso" in seven issues and not one of them falls between the 2016 amendment and today.
So the law says 8 tonnes at two peaks with no streets named, the decree says 5 tonnes all day on five named streets, and in June 2022 the mayor's Plano Municipal de Mobilidade Urbana listed both of them together as the rules to be "effectivated" and extended. Nothing here is priced.
The decree sends a breach to "the corresponding penalty in the Código de Trânsito Brasileiro" without naming an article, a sum or a licence point, and the law it implements has no penalty article at all — so this record carries no fine, unlike São Paulo, Salvador, Recife, Manaus or Campinas, where the authority printed the class and the amount itself.
Porto Alegre keeps lorries out of its Centro Histórico for most of the working day, and keeps the heaviest ones out altogether.
The test is the vehicle, not what it emits: EPTC, the municipal transport and traffic company, states that a vehicle whose Peso Bruto Total — its gross laden weight — is above 10 tonnes, and/or which is longer than seven metres, may not drive in the Centro Histórico from 07:00 to 19:00 Monday to Friday and from 07:00 to 14:00 on Saturday.
Above 15 tonnes gross the ban is absolute: EPTC writes that those vehicles have circulação proibida em todos os horários, at every hour of every day. Seven roads stay open to the restricted classes even inside those hours, and EPTC names them: Av. Loureiro da Silva, Av.
Luiz Englert, Av. Sarmento Leite, Av. Paulo Gama, Av.
Mauá, Av. Pres. João Goulart and the Túnel da Conceição.
Below the threshold nothing applies — a car, a van, a motorcycle or a lorry at or under 10 tonnes and no more than seven metres circulates freely at any hour — and there is nothing to pay and no day pass to buy. Emergency and public-utility vehicles are excepted by name: fire engines, tow trucks and mechanical-rescue vehicles, and cash-in-transit vehicles.
Anything else that must be there inside the restricted hours needs a Licença de Circulação no Centro Histórico (LCH), applied for in advance with the vehicle's number plate and the service being performed. One thing to understand about this scheme before you rely on it: unlike every other Brazilian entry in this corpus, we could find no decree or portaria behind it.
The rule is carried by the signs themselves, and the city says so — Porto Alegre's own law office wrote in 1994 that the municipality limits heavy traffic on urban roads mediante aposição de placas indicativas, by putting up signs. EPTC's register of every road sign in the city bears that out: sixteen R-9 lorry-prohibition signs around the centre carry this exact rule as their legend.
Porto Velho is the inverse of every other Brazilian lorry scheme in this corpus. It does not draw a restricted ring inside the city — it restricts the whole urban area and then names seven ways that are outside it. Lei nº 2.785, de 08 de janeiro de 2021 sorts vehicles by Peso Bruto Total.
Up to 10 tonnes, loaded or empty, you may drive at any hour. From 16 to 24 tonnes — the law's caminhões TOCO and TRUCK — you may drive only between 20:00 and 06:00, with Saturdays opening from 14:00. Above 24 tonnes, the Carretas, you may not drive at all: Art.
2º III bars you "em qualquer dia e horário", with no window, no Sunday and no relief. Carters working by hand or with animals are confined to 20:00–06:00.
The seven exceptions are the through-routes, and they are what makes the city crossable: the BR-319 and the BR-364, the Rua da Beira on both marginals, Avenida dos Imigrantes, the RO-005 or Estrada da Penal, Avenida Farquar between Avenida dos Imigrantes and the Estrada do Belmont, and the Estrada do Belmont itself.
Every rule closes the loading bay at the same time as the street — each one governs "a circulação de veículos automotores e serviço de carga e descarga de qualquer natureza". ⚠️ Three things need saying plainly. First, the law leaves the same hole Cuiabá's does, and it is not a copying slip at our end: Art.
2º runs from "até 10 (dez) toneladas" straight to "de 16 (dezesseis) toneladas", and nothing between 10 and 16 tonnes gross is classified. Unlike Cuiabá's, this gap is partly answered by the regulating decree, which draws its permit line at 10 tonnes rather than 16 — so the executive appears to read the silence as restriction. Both halves are below; neither is encoded as hours, because neither text states any.
Second, this scheme is regulated and its predecessor never was. Lei nº 2.255, de 06 de outubro de 2015 banned vehicles over 5 tonnes from eight named avenues on weekdays, and its own Art. 8º made it conditional on an Executive decree that, measured against the publisher's register, was never issued.
Third, nothing here can be priced. The law states its fines and its permit fee in UPF, the municipal tax unit, and the last act in the register that set a value for the UPF is from 1989, in a currency Brazil has replaced twice since.
Recife is the first city in this corpus whose restriction is a lane rather than an area, and the distinction is the whole of the record: the avenues stay open to everybody, but the blue lane painted along the left of six named corridors belongs to public transport from Monday to Friday between 06:00 and 22:00, and driving along it costs R$ 243,47 and seven licence points.
The CTTU, the municipal traffic authority, states the rule in the present tense on its own service page: buses have the lane, taxis registered in the município of Recife also have it, and everyone else may enter only to make a turn or to reach a property on the right — with the paint itself telling a driver when that is allowed, because the line goes from solid to dashed where entry is permitted.
The corridors it names are the avenues Recife, Mascarenhas de Moraes, Herculano Bandeira/Engenheiro Domingos Ferreira and Conselheiro Aguiar, plus the streets Real da Torre and Cosme Viana.
Enforcement is by patrol and by camera, and the camera rule is unusually forgiving in a way worth knowing: on the lanes with frontage properties a driver is notified only after being caught by two or more cameras, precisely so that a legitimate turn is not fined. What makes this record firm without an instrument behind it is that the publisher runs the scheme in public data as well as in prose.
The CTTU ships the lanes themselves as a GeoJSON of twelve line features under the Open Database License, and it publishes every fine it issues: in its 2025 register, 18,442 of 171,109 citations carry infraction code 7587, "Transitar na faixa ou via exclusiva regulam. p/ transp. públ. coletivo passag.", under article 184, section III of the federal traffic code, with the enforcing agent recorded as "Código 9 - FAIXA AZUL".
This is not a rule we found written down and hoped was current. It is one we watched bind eighteen thousand drivers in the publisher's own ledger.
Penalty 243.47 BRL
Six streets of Salvador's historic centre are closed to general traffic, and unlike the city's lorry restriction this one reaches every vehicle, including a private car.
Transalvador, the municipal traffic superintendency, states that circulation is restricted on Porta do Carmo, Leovigildo de Carvalho, João de Deus, Das Laranjeiras, Santa Isabel and the Largo do Pelourinho — the heart of the Pelourinho, the UNESCO-listed quarter. There is no charge, no day pass and no barrier: access is by registration or not at all.
Residents who can prove they have a parking space of their own are guaranteed access once they register with Transalvador; tourism coaches and taxis registered with the mobility secretariat SEMOB may set down and pick up passengers on those streets at signposted places; and loading and unloading is allowed in signposted areas from Monday to Saturday between 07:00 and 11:00. Everyone else is simply out.
What makes this record firmer than Salvador's other entry is that here we hold the instrument itself, in the publisher's own gazette: Portaria nº 416/2015 of the Transalvador superintendency, signed 3 November 2015 and published in the Diário Oficial do Município of 6 November 2015, Ano XXIX nº 6.456, page 9, which Transalvador hosts as a PDF beside the rule.
Two things the portaria does not do, and neither is guesswork on our part: it puts no clock on the restriction — the only hours in it belong to the loading window — and it names no article of the federal traffic code behind the fine, leaving enforcement to its own Gerência de Fiscalização de Trânsito "em conformidade com o Código de Trânsito Brasileiro", so there is no amount here to quote.
Salvador keeps large lorries off its main corridors at the busiest hours of the day.
The test is the size of the vehicle, not what it emits and not what it weighs: Transalvador, the city's traffic authority, states that a caminhão de grande porte — a lorry above 6.5 metres long and 2.2 metres wide — together with tratores, agricultural and construction tractors, may not drive in the Áreas de Restrição de Circulação between 06:00 and 10:00 Monday to Saturday, or between 17:00 and 20:00 Monday to Friday.
On the Orla, the seafront strip, a third window runs 09:00 to 20:00 on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays. The restriction is not only about moving: Transalvador writes that the ARC also mean no stopping, no parking and no loading or unloading inside them.
Below the threshold nothing applies — a car, a van, a motorcycle or a lorry at or under 6.5 metres and 2.2 metres circulates freely at every hour — and there is nothing to pay and no day pass to buy. Veículos Urbanos de Carga, the small urban delivery lorries, are exempt by name and may circulate on any day at any time.
Construction and renovation firms working inside the restricted areas apply instead for an Autorização Especial de Tráfego, Carga e Descarga.
The areas themselves are a closed list: a ring of central avenues enclosing the commercial core, the whole seafront contour from the Largo da Calçada to the Jardim dos Namorados, and nineteen further named avenues and streets including the Paralela, the Bonocô, the ACM and a stretch of the BR-324.
One thing to understand before you rely on this entry: Transalvador states the rule on four of its own channels and names no decree or portaria behind it on any of them, and we could not settle the question, because Salvador's official gazette is not searchable by its contents. What we can tell you is that the rule is enforced and that the authority publishes it in the present tense.
Penalty 130.16 BRL
São Paulo closes its central ring to one pair of plate digits a day, at rush hour only. Monday takes plates ending 1 and 2, Tuesday 3 and 4, Wednesday 5 and 6, Thursday 7 and 8, Friday 9 and 0, from 07:00 to 10:00 and again from 17:00 to 20:00. Between and after those windows, and at every hour of Saturday, Sunday and a public holiday, the scheme bans nobody.
It applies to the area inside the Minianel Viário — the ring of ten named expressways and avenues the decree lists one by one, from the Marginal Tietê round to the Avenida Salim Farah Maluf — and it applies on the ring roads themselves, not only inside them. Two things make it unusual for a plate ban.
It is keyed to the plate alone: no emission class, no registration date, and it makes no difference where the car is licensed, so a hire car or a foreign plate is in the scheme on exactly the same terms as a São Paulo one.
And it is suspended often — for public holidays, for the eve of a long weekend, for a metro strike, sometimes for a single afternoon — each time by a dated portaria the CET lists in a public register we link below.
São Paulo closes most of its central area to lorries for sixteen hours of every working day. Inside the Zona de Máxima Restrição de Circulação — the ZMRC — no caminhão may drive from 05:00 to 21:00 Monday to Friday, or from 10:00 to 14:00 on Saturday. Public holidays are outside it, and so is every hour of Sunday.
This is a different scheme from the rodízio, and a lorry driver in São Paulo meets both: the rodízio bars one pair of plate digits for three hours twice a day inside the Minianel Viário, while the ZMRC bars lorries as a class, for far longer, over an area the city delimits street by street. The way in is an authorisation rather than a payment.
A lorry that needs to enter during the restricted hours must hold an Autorização Especial de Trânsito para Caminhões (AETC), granted in advance by the Departamento de Operação do Sistema Viário for one of about twenty named services — refuse collection, concrete, removals, market access, postal work, breakdown recovery, access to a parking space the operator owns or rents — each with its own permitted hours.
Small lorries help themselves: a Veículo Urbano de Carga, at most 2.20 m wide and 7.20 m long and built from January 2005, may use the ZMRC at any hour once registered. Outside the restricted hours no authorisation and no prior registration are needed at all, and cars, vans and motorcycles are never in this scheme.
Penalty 130.16 BRL