Brazil: 2 schemes to know about before you drive in.
Curitiba has 2 driving restrictions on our books: the Restrição ao tráfego de veículos de carga na BR 476 (Linha Verde), Km… (heavy vehicle ban) and the Zona Central de Tráfego — restrição à circulação de veículos acima de… (heavy vehicle ban). What is a heavy vehicle ban?
Sources last read on 2026-09-13, from the authorities' own pages. The next scheduled check is 2026-12-12.
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.