Brazil: 2 schemes to know about before you drive in.
Goiânia has 2 driving restrictions on our books: the Proibição de circulação de Veículos Pesados Tipo CTV (caminhões… (heavy vehicle ban) and the Zona de Restrição de Tráfego I (ZRT I) (heavy vehicle ban). What is a heavy vehicle ban?
Sources last read on 2026-09-14, from the authorities' own pages. The next scheduled check is 2026-12-13.
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.