Salvador, Brazil · Heavy vehicle ban
Partly in force in Salvador right nowTuesday, 13 October 2026 at 06:05 · America/Bahia
Lifts Tuesday, 13 October 2026 at 10:00 local time.
Transalvador's rule reaches public holidays explicitly — the Orla window runs "aos sábados, domingos e feriados" — and we hold no official, dated Brazilian holiday calendar to name those days. This is the dangerous direction, and it is the reverse of São Paulo's lorry scheme, where the holidays are carved out. A public holiday falling on a weekday will be scored here as an ordinary weekday: the 06:00–10:00 and 17:00–20:00 windows will show correctly, but the Orla's 09:00–20:00 window will be missed, so this schedule under-warns on the seafront on a weekday holiday. On the seafront, treat any public holiday as a Sunday.
The third rule is the Orla alone and the first two are the whole scheme, and this schedule cannot tell you which of them you are under. A lorry on the Paralela at eleven on a Saturday morning is outside every window; a lorry on the seafront at the same minute is inside the third one. Read the rule labels rather than the headline verdict.
The vehicle test is a measurement, not a weight, and this schedule assumes you have already applied it. Above 6.5 metres long and 2.2 metres wide puts you in; at or under either figure puts you out at every hour. Unlike the other Brazilian lorry schemes in this corpus there is no tonnage to look up on a registration document.
A registered Veículo Urbano de Carga is exempt at every hour of every day and is not encoded here, and neither is an AETCD held by a construction firm. The rules above will show the scheme as closed to both.
The ban is not only on driving. Transalvador states that the ARC also forbid stopping, parking and loading or unloading, so a vehicle that is stationary inside a restricted area during a restricted window is still in breach. This schedule reports when the area is closed, not what closure forbids.
Several of the named roads are restricted only along a stretch — the BR-324 from the Av. Luis Eduardo Magalhães access towards the Bonocô, Av. Otávio Mangabeira between Av. Amaralina and the Jardim dos Namorados, and the segments of the ACM and the Tancredo Neves between the junctions Transalvador names. This schedule carries the hours, not the stretch, and will over-warn along the unrestricted parts of those roads.
Operating times only, read from the source below. It does not check your vehicle.
Salvador keeps large lorries off its main corridors at the busiest hours of the day.
The test is the size of the vehicle, not what it emits and not what it weighs: Transalvador, the city's traffic authority, states that a caminhão de grande porte — a lorry above 6.5 metres long and 2.2 metres wide — together with tratores, agricultural and construction tractors, may not drive in the Áreas de Restrição de Circulação between 06:00 and 10:00 Monday to Saturday, or between 17:00 and 20:00 Monday to Friday.
On the Orla, the seafront strip, a third window runs 09:00 to 20:00 on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays. The restriction is not only about moving: Transalvador writes that the ARC also mean no stopping, no parking and no loading or unloading inside them.
Below the threshold nothing applies — a car, a van, a motorcycle or a lorry at or under 6.5 metres and 2.2 metres circulates freely at every hour — and there is nothing to pay and no day pass to buy. Veículos Urbanos de Carga, the small urban delivery lorries, are exempt by name and may circulate on any day at any time.
Construction and renovation firms working inside the restricted areas apply instead for an Autorização Especial de Tráfego, Carga e Descarga.
The areas themselves are a closed list: a ring of central avenues enclosing the commercial core, the whole seafront contour from the Largo da Calçada to the Jardim dos Namorados, and nineteen further named avenues and streets including the Paralela, the Bonocô, the ACM and a stretch of the BR-324.
One thing to understand before you rely on this entry: Transalvador states the rule on four of its own channels and names no decree or portaria behind it on any of them, and we could not settle the question, because Salvador's official gazette is not searchable by its contents. What we can tell you is that the rule is enforced and that the authority publishes it in the present tense.
Transalvador (Superintendência de Trânsito do Salvador), Secretaria Municipal de Mobilidade — "Áreas de Restrição de Circulação (ARC)", the traffic authority's own present-tense statement of the vehicle test, the three time windows and the closed list of restricted roads
There is no charge. This is a ban, not a charging scheme: Transalvador prohibits the vehicle from being in the restricted areas during 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 Autorização Especial de Tráfego, Carga e Descarga, for construction and renovation firms with work inside the areas — and Transalvador states no price for it on any page we can read.
The authority does publish a tariff list for other services it sells, from R$ 239,98 for a post-event inspection to R$ 3.236,10 for traffic management on an arterial road, so a fee would have somewhere to be printed; the AETCD is not on that list. We looked for a tariff and did not find one, so if Transalvador charges for issuing an AETCD, it does not publish the figure where we can read it.
Three windows run inside this one scheme, and the third one is the trap. Transalvador states that traffic of the restricted lorries and tractors in the ARC "é proibido nos períodos entre 6h e 10h, de segunda a sábado; entre 17h e 20h, de segunda a sexta-feira; e entre 9h e 20h, aos sábados, domingos e feriados na Orla de Salvador".
So the morning window, 06:00 to 10:00, runs six days a week including Saturday; the evening window, 17:00 to 20:00, runs Monday to Friday only; and on the Orla — the seafront strip, which the same page defines as the contour from the Largo da Calçada to the Jardim dos Namorados — there is a long weekend window from 09:00 to 20:00 that covers Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays.
Saturday on the seafront therefore carries two overlapping bans and is closed from 06:00 right through to 20:00. Sunday is free everywhere except the Orla, where it is closed for eleven hours. Outside those windows the restricted vehicle needs nothing: no permit, no registration, no payment.
The same three windows appear in four separate publisher channels spanning eight years — the DTRAN operational page above, Transalvador's own service page published on 17 January 2023, and two of its news releases from 2018 and 2020 — with the hours identical in every one of them, which is the strongest confirmation we have that they are current.
Public holidays are stated rather than inferred: the word "feriados" is in the rule, and it widens the scheme rather than narrowing it, which is the opposite of São Paulo's lorry restriction and matters for how this schedule under-warns.
Transalvador — "Áreas de Restrição de Circulação (ARC)", for all three windows and for the holiday clause on the Orla
Transalvador defines the Áreas de Restrição de Circulação by naming them, and the list closes. It has three parts. The first is a closed polygon around the commercial core, given as the inner contour of the area enclosed by Av.
Jequitaia, the Túnel Américo Simas, Av. Marechal Castelo Branco, Av. Vasco da Gama, Av.
Juracy Magalhães Júnior, Av. Antônio Carlos Magalhães from Av. Juracy Magalhães Júnior as far as Av.
Tancredo Neves, Av. Tancredo Neves from Av. Antônio Carlos Magalhães as far as Av.
Professor Magalhães Neto, and Av. Professor Magalhães Neto. The second is the seafront: "o contorno da orla marítima desde o Largo da Calçada até o Jardim dos Namorados", the whole coastal contour from the Largo da Calçada in the lower city round to the Jardim dos Namorados in the south-east.
The third is a list of nineteen further roads: Av. Antônio Carlos Magalhães, Av. Barros Reis, Av.
Fernandes da Cunha, Av. General Graça Lessa (Ogunjá), Av. General San Martin, Av.
Heitor Dias, Av. Luis Eduardo Magalhães, Av. Luis Viana (the Paralela), Av.
Mario Leal Ferreira (the Bonocô), Av. Otávio Mangabeira between Av. Amaralina and the Jardim dos Namorados, the BR-324 from the access to Av.
Luis Eduardo Magalhães in the direction of Av. Mario Leal Ferreira, and the ruas Barão de Cotegipe, do Imperador, Fernandes Vieira, Luis Maria, Nilo Peçanha, Padre Antônio de Sá, Regis Pacheco and Arthur Catrambi.
Three of those names carry their own stretch limits and we repeat them rather than rounding them off: the ACM, the Tancredo Neves, the Otávio Mangabeira and the BR-324 are restricted along a named segment, not end to end. There is no map.
Salvador publishes this scheme as words, and we looked in the two places a shape could have been: the municipal ArcGIS server behind the city's open-data site lists its whole directory to us — 25 folders, 377 services, 2,715 layers, with no folder refused — and not one layer is a restricted area, a lorry route or a traffic regulation; the only layer the mobility secretariat contributes at all is its traffic cameras.
OpenStreetMap holds no low-emission-zone or toll boundary object within 20 km of the city anchor. So the roads are named and the shape is not published, and we warn at city level rather than drawing a polygon Salvador has not drawn.
Transalvador — "Áreas de Restrição de Circulação (ARC)", for the enclosing polygon, the seafront contour and the closed list of named roads
The authority's own map: Transalvador (Superintendência de Trânsito do Salvador), Secretaria Municipal…
There is no emission standard to meet, and no petrol car is in this scheme at any hour. The rule sorts vehicles by physical size — above 6.5 metres long and 2.2 metres wide — and Transalvador 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 length and its width whatever it runs on. Note that weight is never mentioned either, which makes this scheme unusual among the Brazilian lorry restrictions in this corpus — São Paulo, Belo Horizonte, Curitiba and Porto Alegre all key theirs to a tonnage, and Salvador keys its to a tape measure.
There is therefore no figure on the vehicle's registration document to check: a driver has to know the dimensions of the vehicle.
We could not read the federal Código de Trânsito Brasileiro from here on 2026-09-13 to quote whatever definition it gives of a caminhão: 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.
Transalvador — "Área de restrição: Bonocô é a via com mais infrações de caminhões", the authority's own news release of 4 August 2020, which states the infraction class, the amount and the licence points for this restriction specifically: "O condutor que desrespeitar a legislação comete infração média e é punido com multa de R$130,16 e a subtração de quatro pontos na Carteira Nacional de Habilitação (CNH)." It is an infração média and carries 4 points on the Brazilian licence as well as the money. Transalvador names no article of the Código de Trânsito Brasileiro alongside it and we do not supply one (D-053). Read the amount as the figure the publisher last printed rather than as today's tariff: this release is dated 4 August 2020 and the authority has not restated the sum on its service pages since, so the class and the points are the durable part of the answer and the number may have moved. The same release carries the enforcement behind it — 3,640 drivers cited in 2019 and 801 between January and March 2020, with the three worst locations on the Bonocô and the Luís Eduardo Magalhães
Transalvador — the ARC page for the vehicle test, the three windows, the named roads and the stopping and loading ban, read together with its news release of 5 June 2018, which is where the VUC exemption, the seven streets it names and the AETCD permit for construction firms are stated
Transalvador (Superintendência de Trânsito do Salvador), Secretaria Municipal de Mobilidade — "Áreas de Restrição de Circulação (ARC)", served from the authority's own operational citizen system: the present-tense statement of the vehicle test, all three time windows, the stopping and loading ban and the closed list of restricted roads (the endpoint we monitor for all of it)
Transalvador — "Áreas de Restrição de Circulação (ARC)" on the authority's public website, published 17 January 2023. A second, independently maintained publisher channel carrying the same rule: the same threshold, the same three windows and the same road list, on a different host and a different content system from the operational page above. Where a scheme has no instrument to point at, two channels agreeing is the evidence that the rule is current (the D-081 test), and this is that second channel
Transalvador — "Área de restrição: Bonocô é a via com mais infrações de caminhões", news release of 4 August 2020. This is where the authority itself joins the two halves the corpus otherwise refuses to join: it states that breaking this specific restriction is an infração média carrying a R$ 130,16 fine and four licence points, so the penalty is the publisher's own rather than a class we picked out of the national table (D-053, and the São Paulo ZMRC precedent D-065). It also carries the enforcement counts — 3,640 drivers cited in 2019, 801 in the first quarter of 2020 — and repeats the three windows
Transalvador — "Transalvador volta a fiscalizar tráfego de caminhões após crise no abastecimento", news release of 5 June 2018, announcing the resumption of enforcement after the national lorry drivers' strike. It is the only channel that states the exemptions: that Veículos Urbanos de Carga may circulate on any day at any hour, the seven streets where that is spelled out, and the Autorização Especial de Tráfego, Carga e Descarga required of construction and renovation firms. It also states the threshold and all three windows in the same words the 2023 page uses, which is how we know the rule has not moved in eight years
Transalvador — "Restrição à circulação de caminhões será retomada a partir desta terça (04)", news release of 3 August 2020, announcing that enforcement suspended in March 2020 for pandemic supply reasons resumed on 4 August 2020. It matters here for a reason the other sources cannot supply: it shows that when Transalvador suspends this restriction it announces the suspension and announces the resumption, which is what lets a search of its news index answer the question Rio de Janeiro taught us to ask (D-070). It is also the source of the publisher's self-contradiction recorded in V-010, writing "2,2 de altura" where the service pages write "2,2 metros de largura"
Next scheduled re-check: 2026-12-12.
A city can run more than one scheme, and they do not always answer the same question.