Brazil: 1 scheme to know about before you drive in.
Porto Alegre has one driving restriction on our books: the Restrição da circulação de caminhões no Centro Histórico (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.
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.