Curitiba, Brazil · Heavy vehicle ban
Official name 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)
Not in force in Curitiba right nowTuesday, 13 October 2026 at 06:04 · America/Sao Paulo
Starts Tuesday, 13 October 2026 at 09:00 local time.
Article 10 of Decreto Municipal nº 934/1997 releases "o sábado, domingo e feriados" for the purposes of articles 3, 4 and 8, so every Brazilian public holiday is outside this scheme — and we hold no official, dated Brazilian holiday calendar to name those days. The rules above therefore treat a public holiday as an ordinary weekday or Saturday, which over-warns on a holiday rather than under-warning on a working day.
This timetable is the circulation ban in article 8 and nothing else. Loading and unloading inside the same perimeter runs on the opposite clock under article 3 — a goods vehicle of 1.8 to 7.0 tonnes is allowed in a marked bay only from 19:30 to 08:30 on weekdays, one of 7.0 to 14.0 tonnes only from 19:30 to 07:30 — so this schedule will report the scheme as inactive at 10:00 for a five-tonne van that is nonetheless forbidden to unload then.
The threshold is stated without a qualifier and we have not resolved it. Article 8 bars vehicles "acima de 7,0 toneladas" without saying whether that is gross weight or rated payload, while the rest of the decree consistently measures capacidade de carga útil. A vehicle near 7 tonnes on either measure should treat itself as inside the scheme.
An authorisation under article 7 or article 9 changes the answer and is not encoded here. A vehicle the authority has authorised for a stated address and stated hours may be inside the zone when these rules show it closed.
We hold no geometry for the perimeter, so a route check warns for the whole city rather than for the zone. The decree names every boundary street and the restricted area is signed on the ground; on the edge, read the street names above rather than this verdict.
Article 11 lets the IPPUC extend the covered areas and adjust the capacities, dimensions and hours by portaria without amending the decree. We hold no such portaria, and this schedule encodes the decree as it stands.
Operating times only, read from the source below. It does not check your vehicle.
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.
Secretaria Municipal de Defesa Social e Trânsito (SMDT), Prefeitura Municipal de Curitiba — Decreto Municipal nº 934, de 11 de setembro de 1997, articles 2, 3, 8 and 10, as the authority publishes it on its own municipal-legislation page
Nothing is charged for driving here and there is nothing to buy. Decreto Municipal nº 934/1997 prohibits and permits; it never prices a trip, and it creates no toll, day pass or payable exemption.
What costs money is the exception, not the rule: article 7 lets the authority grant an authorisation for concrete, building materials, removals and other cases that exceed the stated capacities and hours, and SMDT's own service page for that authorisation quotes the 2026 municipal fee table — R$ 91,45 plus the EstaR parking charge where the hours are unrestricted, R$ 160,08 plus R$ 73,58 a day in a no-parking length, R$ 91,45 where a vehicle exceeds the signed tonnage or blocks a running lane, and R$ 257,98 a day on the calçadão.
Those are fees for an authorisation to stop or work in the street, not a charge for entering the Zona Central de Tráfego, and we do not present them as one.
Two timetables run inside this one decree, and which one you are on depends on whether you are driving through or delivering. Circulation is the shorter rule: article 8 bars vehicles over 7.0 tonnes or over 7.0 metres long from inside the Zona Central de Tráfego "no período compreendido entre 09h00 e 19h00 em dias úteis, e entre 09h00 e 13h30 de sábado".
Loading and unloading runs on the opposite clock, under article 3, and is keyed to the vehicle's rated load capacity and length: a utility vehicle up to 1.8 tonnes may load at any hour in an ordinary car parking space, paying the EstaR card where the bay is blue or mixed; a goods vehicle between 1.8 and 7.0 tonnes and at most 7.0 m long may load only in a marked loading bay, on weekdays between 19:30 and 08:30 and from 13:30 on Saturday to 08:30 on Monday; and one between 7.0 and 14.0 tonnes and at most 14.0 m long only between 19:30 and 07:30 on weekdays and from 13:30 on Saturday to 07:30 on Monday.
Pedestrian areas and exclusive bus lanes have their own later windows under articles 4 and 5 and need permission first. Article 10 then settles the weekend and the calendar for all of them at once: "As liberações de carga/descarga e circulação de veículos de carga nos fins-de-seman citados nos arts. 3º, 4º e 8º compreendem o sábado, domingo e feriados" — the decree's own typography, typo included.
So Sunday is free, every Brazilian public holiday is free, and the Saturday release begins at 13:30 for circulation. Nothing in the decree states an end date or a seasonal variation.
SMDT, Prefeitura Municipal de Curitiba — Decreto Municipal nº 934/1997, articles 3, 4, 5, 8 and 10, the instrument itself as published by the traffic authority
The decree does not draw a line; it walks one, street by street, and the walk closes. Article 2 defines the "Zona Central de Tráfego" as the area bounded by: starting at Rua Augusto Stellfeld at the corner of Rua Francisco Rocha, along Rua Francisco Rocha to the Praça do Japão, around the praça to Av. República Argentina, along it to Av.
Silva Jardim, to Rua Mariano Torres, to Av. Presidente Affonso Camargo, to Rua Ubaldino do Amaral at the viaduto Capanema, to Rua Conselheiro Araújo, to Rua Luiz Leão, to Av. João Gualberto, to Rua Ivo Leão, on along Rua Lysimaco Ferreira da Costa to Rua Nilo Peçanha, on along Rua Trajano Reis to Rua Jaime Reis, to Rua Dr.
Muricy, to Rua Augusto Stellfeld, to Rua Fernando Moreira, to Rua Desembargador Motta, back to Rua Augusto Stellfeld and along it to Rua Francisco Rocha, "concluindo o perímetro traçado".
That is the whole of the central district — the Centro proper together with the edges of Centro Cívico, Alto da Glória, Cristo Rei, Rebouças, Batel and Mercês — and it is one shape rather than a list of segments, which is what makes this scheme different from Belo Horizonte's and São Paulo's. Two of those names carry a caution.
The decree spells Lysimaco without its accent and writes "Stellfel" once for Stellfeld, and it names the Praça do Japão and the viaduto Capanema as landmarks rather than as streets; we reproduce the perimeter as the publisher wrote it rather than tidying it.
Article 11 leaves the perimeter open to change: it lets the IPPUC create further areas covered by the decree and adjust the vehicle dimensions, capacities and hours by portaria, so a later portaria could extend this without amending the decree. We hold no such portaria and state none.
Eighteen of the perimeter streets exist in OpenStreetMap under those names inside the central bounding box, and the furthest corner of any of them is 5.36 km from the city anchor — Av. Presidente Affonso Camargo, taken along its whole length rather than the restricted part.
SMDT, Prefeitura Municipal de Curitiba — Decreto Municipal nº 934/1997, article 2, the perimeter as the decree traces it, with article 11 for the power to extend it
There is no emission standard to meet, and no ordinary car is in this scheme at any hour. The rule sorts vehicles by weight and length — over 7.0 tonnes, or over 7.0 metres — and by nothing else. Decreto Municipal nº 934/1997 names no Euro class, no PROCONVE phase, no registration year and no fuel anywhere in its 6,014 characters.
Not applicable, for the same reason as the petrol standard: the decree never mentions fuel or emissions, and a vehicle is in the scheme on its size alone. One thing about the threshold itself we cannot settle, and say so rather than choosing. Article 8 bars "veículos acima de 7,0 toneladas e/ou cumprimento acima de 7,0 metros" without saying whether the tonnage is the vehicle's gross weight or its rated payload.
Everywhere else the decree does say: article 3 sorts vehicles "de acordo com a capacidade de carga útil e comprimento", article 11 speaks of "dimensões e capacidade de carga útil dos veículos", and Portaria SETRAN nº 18/2017 — which cites article 3, II of this decree as its authority — describes the same bracket as "veículos de 1,8 até 7,0 ton." of load capacity.
Load capacity is therefore the decree's own vocabulary throughout, and the safer reading of article 8 for a driver is that a vehicle rated over 7.0 tonnes of payload is caught; but the article does not repeat the qualifier and we do not put the word back in on the publisher's behalf. If your vehicle is near the line, treat yourself as inside the scheme.
Assume a breach is an infraction and that we cannot tell you its size: the publisher does not state it.
Decreto Municipal nº 934/1997 is silent — searching the whole instrument for "multa", "penalidade" and "infra" matched nothing in 79 lines and 6,014 characters, and the only related word in it is "infringir", in article 6's requirement that loading vehicles not break the ordinary traffic rules — and the decree never cites the federal Código de Trânsito Brasileiro, by article or otherwise.
It could not have: the decree predates the current CTB. Lei nº 9.503 — the Código de Trânsito Brasileiro, dated 23 September 1997 in Curitiba's own Portaria SMDT nº 11/2022 — was enacted twelve days after this decree was signed and five days after it was published. Following D-053 we will not read a fine class out of the national table on our own authority when the publisher has not connected the two.
What is certain is that Curitiba enforces its own traffic rules and charges for the paperwork: the city runs its own agentes municipais de trânsito under a federal delegation and publishes the fine revenue, and SMDT's authorisation page quotes a 2026 fee of R$ 91,45 for a vehicle that "exceder tonelagem ou invadir faixa de circulação" in a permitted-parking length — a fee for the authorisation, not the penalty for going without one.
SMDT, Prefeitura Municipal de Curitiba — Decreto Municipal nº 934/1997 for the thresholds, the perimeter, the two timetables and the authorisation, with the application route and the 2026 fees taken from SMDT's own "Autorização para Mudanças/Carga e Descarga" service page
SMDT, Prefeitura Municipal de Curitiba — Decreto Municipal nº 934, de 11 de setembro de 1997, "Disciplina o serviço de carga e descarga de mercadorias na área central da cidade de Curitiba": the instrument itself, carrying the perimeter (article 2), the loading windows by capacity (article 3), the pedestrian-area and bus-lane rules (articles 4 and 5), the authorisation (article 7), the circulation ban over 7.0 t or 7.0 m from 09:00 to 19:00 on weekdays and 09:00 to 13:30 on Saturday (article 8), and the Sunday-and-holiday release (article 10). Published in the Diário Oficial do Município edition 71 of 18/09/1997 and served by the traffic authority as a PDF, which the monitor reads in full — machine-watched since 2026-09-18
SMDT, Prefeitura Municipal de Curitiba — "Legislação Municipal", the traffic authority's own index of the acts it operates under: it lists this decree under Carga e Descarga with its summary, and it is the page that tells revoked instruments apart from live ones, marking Portaria SETRAN nº 100/2015 and nº 71/2016 "(Revogada)" while leaving the decree and Portaria SMDT nº 11/2022 unmarked (the endpoint we monitor for whether the authority still operates under this decree)
SMDT, Prefeitura Municipal de Curitiba — "Autorização para Mudanças/Carga e Descarga", the service page for the article 7 authorisation: it answers the question "Qual a Legislação Municipal referente?" in the present tense with this decree, and it is a page the authority still maintains, quoting the 2026 municipal fee table (the endpoint we monitor for the authorisation route and the present-tense citation)
SMDT, Prefeitura Municipal de Curitiba — Portaria SETRAN nº 18, de 6 de dezembro de 2017, which cites "o artigo 3º, II do Decreto Municipal n.º 934/1997" as its own authority and regulates the loading-bay card for vehicles of 1.8 to 7.0 tonnes: a second municipal act, twenty years later, operating on this decree's article numbering unchanged. Served as a PDF, so no watched strings are declared
Next scheduled re-check: 2026-12-12.
A city can run more than one scheme, and they do not always answer the same question.