Porto Alegre, Brazil · Heavy vehicle ban
Official name Restrição da circulação de caminhões no Centro Histórico
Partly in force in Porto Alegre right nowTuesday, 13 October 2026 at 06:05 · America/Sao Paulo
One of these three rules never switches off, so this schedule reports the scheme as partly in force at three in the morning on a Sunday. That is not a rounding error: EPTC really does bar vehicles above 15 tonnes gross "em todos os horários". Read the rule labels rather than the headline — a lorry at or under 10 tonnes, and any car, is bound by none of them.
The weight test and the length test are encoded as a single class because EPTC writes them as "e/ou", either one. Its own LCH information sheet writes them as "e", both at once, which would put a 12-tonne lorry of six metres outside the scheme rather than inside it. We encode the stricter reading and say so: the error that direction is a detour, never a fine.
Seven roads stay open inside the restricted hours and this schedule cannot tell you whether you are on one of 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 are exempt corridors through a restricted district; the rules above will show the scheme as closed while you are legally driving on one.
Public holidays are not encoded because the publisher does not mention them. Neither "feriado" nor "domingo" appears anywhere on EPTC's page, so this schedule treats a public holiday as an ordinary weekday or Saturday.
A Licença de Circulação no Centro Histórico changes the answer and is not encoded here. A vehicle EPTC has licensed may enter for the service its permit names; the rules above will show the scheme as closed to it.
Two of the sixteen cordon signs EPTC's own register records carry legends that differ from the published rule — one ends the weekday window at 18:00 rather than 19:00, one states an 18-tonne band with a 16-tonne absolute limit. This schedule encodes the published rule. On the ground the sign governs.
Operating times only, read from the source below. It does not check your vehicle.
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.
EPTC (Empresa Pública de Transporte e Circulação), Prefeitura de Porto Alegre — "Uso da Via Pública - Autorizações", the traffic authority's own present-tense statement of the restriction, the open roads, the exceptions and the LCH permit
There is no charge. This is a ban, not a charging scheme: EPTC prohibits the vehicle from being there in the restricted hours and offers no toll, no day pass and no payable exemption that would let it in.
What exists instead of a payment is a permit — the Licença de Circulação no Centro Histórico — and it is granted rather than sold: EPTC asks for the vehicle's number plate and the service being performed, at least ten and at most sixty days in advance, and states no price for it on the service page or on the LCH and AET information sheet it links to.
We looked for a tariff and did not find one, so if EPTC charges a handling fee for issuing an LCH, it does not publish the figure where we can read it.
Two timetables run inside this one scheme, and which one applies is decided by how heavy the vehicle is. For a lorry above 10 tonnes Peso Bruto Total and/or longer than seven metres, EPTC states the ban runs from 07:00 to 19:00 Monday to Friday and from 07:00 to 14:00 on Saturday.
Above 15 tonnes gross there is no timetable at all: those vehicles have "circulação proibida em todos os horários", every hour of every day, Sunday included. Sunday is otherwise outside both windows, and so is every hour before 07:00 and after 19:00 on a weekday or after 14:00 on a Saturday.
Public holidays are not mentioned, and that is measured rather than assumed: neither "feriado" nor "domingo" appears anywhere on EPTC's page — 0 matches in 236 lines and 10,399 characters — so unlike São Paulo's lorry scheme this one states no holiday exception, and we do not invent one for it.
The same two windows appear a second time in a completely different publisher channel, which is the strongest confirmation we have that the hours are current.
EPTC's own register of every road sign in Porto Alegre records the legend painted on the cordon signs themselves, and fourteen of the sixteen read "PESO BRUTO TOTAL ENTRE 10 E 15 TON - 2ª A 6ª - 7 ÀS 19H - SÁBADO - 7 ÀS 14H - COMPRIMENTO MÁX=7,0M - PBT ACIMA DE 15 TON - CIRCULAÇÃO PROIBIDA". Two do not match, and we report them rather than smoothing them out: the sign at Av.
Loureiro da Silva nº 2, installed 2017-03-31, reads "7 AS 18" rather than 19, and the one at Rua Sarmento Leite nº 245, installed 2018-06-18, reads "ENTRE 10 E 18 TON" with "PBT ACIMA DE 16 TON CIRC. PROIBIDA". Those are the register's words, not ours.
Where a sign in front of you disagrees with this page, the sign is the rule.
EPTC — "Uso da Via Pública - Autorizações", for both timetables and the all-hours ban above 15 tonnes
The scheme covers the Centro Histórico, Porto Alegre's central district, and EPTC defines it by naming what stays open rather than by drawing a line. Seven roads remain available to the restricted classes inside the restricted hours, and the list closes: Av. Loureiro da Silva, Av.
Luiz Englert, Av. Sarmento Leite, Av. Paulo Gama, Av.
Mauá, Av. Pres. João Goulart and the Túnel da Conceição.
Everything else inside the district is barred to a lorry over the threshold during those hours. EPTC adds that "a região possui placas de sinalização que informam sobre a restrição a caminhões" — the area is signed on the ground — and that is more load-bearing here than it would be elsewhere, because the signs are not a reminder of the rule, they are the rule.
Where the cordon actually stands can be read out of EPTC's own register of every road sign in the city, which is published as open data under a Creative Commons Attribution licence and extracted on 2025-09-01. It holds 115,673 sign records.
Fifty of them are R-9 "PROIBIDO TRÂNSITO DE CAMINHÕES" signs anywhere in the municipality — most of those are unrelated local bans, a 6-tonne limit in one street, a 15-tonne limit in another — and sixteen carry this scheme's legend, the 10-to-15-tonne band together with the weekday window. Eleven of the sixteen were installed on the same day, 2011-03-29, on Av.
Augusto de Carvalho, Rua General Câmara, Largo Visconde do Cairu, Rua General Lima e Silva, Rua General Bento Martins, Av. Borges de Medeiros, Travessa José Carlos Dias de Oliveira, Av. Loureiro da Silva, Rua Capitão Montanha and Travessa Francisco de Leonardo Truda; five more followed on Av.
Alberto Bins (2012), Av. Padre Thomé (2013), Rua General João Manoel (2013), Av. Presidente João Goulart (2015), Av.
Loureiro da Silva (2017) and Rua Sarmento Leite (2018). Seven of the sixteen carry coordinates and nine do not — the register writes "0,0" for a missing position rather than leaving it blank — and the seven that do span 1.15 km at most from the city centre point, which tells you how tight this cordon is.
We hold those sixteen points as evidence of where the rule bites; we do not hold, and will not draw, the polygon they surround.
EPTC — "Uso da Via Pública - Autorizações" for the district and the seven roads that stay open, read together with EPTC's own open-data road-sign register "Sinalização Gráfica" (Creative Commons Attribution, dadosabertos.poa.br, data extracted 2025-09-01) for where the cordon signs stand and what their legends say
The authority's own map: EPTC (Empresa Pública de Transporte e Circulação), Prefeitura de Porto Alegre
There is no emission standard to meet, and no petrol car is in this scheme at any hour. The rule sorts vehicles by gross laden weight and by length — above 10 tonnes Peso Bruto Total, and/or over seven metres, with an absolute ban above 15 tonnes — and EPTC names no Euro class, no PROCONVE phase and no registration year anywhere on the page.
A car, a van or a motorcycle is outside this scheme whatever it burns and whatever year it was built.
Not applicable, for the same reason as the petrol standard: fuel is never mentioned, and a lorry is in the scheme on its weight and its length whatever it runs on.
The measure EPTC uses is "Peso Bruto Total", the gross laden weight, which is the federal Código de Trânsito Brasileiro's term and appears on the vehicle's own registration document — so unlike Belo Horizonte's "capacidade de carga" it needs no conversion by us.
We could not read the federal code from here on 2026-09-13 to quote its definition: www.planalto.gov.br completes TLS and then closes the connection when the HTTP request goes out (B-040), an application-level refusal by a healthy host rather than an unreachable one, and we do not work around it.
Assume there is a fine and that we cannot tell you its size: the publisher does not state it.
EPTC describes the restriction, the permitted roads, the exceptions and the LCH permit, and never names an amount, an infraction class or an article of the Código de Trânsito Brasileiro on any page we can read — not on the service page, not on the LCH and AET information sheet, and not on its own Infrações de Trânsito page, which sends a driver to a separate portal to look their own notice up.
Following D-053 we will not pick a class out of the national fine table on our own authority, and the usual bridge is missing here: São Paulo's lorry fine could be priced because the publisher itself tied the R-9 sign to a specific infraction, and EPTC draws no such link. Enforcement is real.
The restriction is signed with R-9 plates, EPTC's own sign register records sixteen of them around the centre, and EPTC operates the municipal traffic-enforcement agreement with DETRAN/RS under which its agents issue notices.
EPTC — "Uso da Via Pública - Autorizações", for the thresholds, the hours, the open roads, the named exceptions and both permits, with the application deadlines and the 24-hour validation link taken from the same page
EPTC (Empresa Pública de Transporte e Circulação), Prefeitura de Porto Alegre — "Uso da Via Pública - Autorizações": the traffic authority's own present-tense statement of the restriction, the thresholds, both timetables, the seven roads that stay open, the named exceptions and the LCH permit (the endpoint we monitor for all of it)
EPTC — "Sinalização Gráfica", the authority's own register of every horizontal and vertical road sign in Porto Alegre, published as open data under a Creative Commons Attribution licence by the EPTC organisation on dadosabertos.poa.br. The resource is a 23 MB CSV of 115,673 sign records extracted on 2025-09-01; it is what lets us say where this cordon stands and what is written on it, including the two signs whose legends differ from the published rule. We monitor the dataset page rather than the CSV, because re-fetching 23 MB on every watchlist pass would be an abuse of the publisher's server — which means a passing check proves the register still exists, not that its legends are unchanged
Procuradoria-Geral do Município de Porto Alegre — Parecer singular PGM nº 792, de 21 de fevereiro de 1994, in the municipality's own legislation database (SAPL): the city's law office stating that the municipality is competent to limit heavy traffic on urban roads "mediante aposição de placas indicativas", by putting up signs. This is why the corpus's usual question — which decree established the scheme — has no answer here, and it is the publisher's own explanation rather than our inference. The opinion itself is a seven-page scanned PDF with no extractable text; we cite the database record, whose summary is the publisher's own words
EPTC — "Licenças para LCH e AET", the authority's information sheet for the two permits, dated 13 September 2023 in its own filename and linked from the service page. It repeats the thresholds and both timetables, and it is the document that writes the weight and length tests as "e" rather than "e/ou". A PDF, therefore silent: no watched string is set on it (D-077), because the monitor reads a response as text and would withdraw the record on every pass
Next scheduled re-check: 2026-12-12.