Brazil: 2 schemes to know about before you drive in.
São Paulo has 2 driving restrictions on our books: the Rodízio Municipal — Programa de Restrição ao Trânsito de Veículos… (number-plate driving ban) and the Zona de Máxima Restrição de Circulação — ZMRC (Decreto nº 56.920, de 8… (heavy vehicle ban). What is a number-plate driving ban?
Sources last read on 2026-09-13, from the authorities' own pages. The next scheduled check is 2026-12-12.
| Scheme | Kind | Fine |
|---|---|---|
| Rodízio Municipal — Programa de Restrição ao Trânsito de Veículos Automotores (Decreto nº 58.584 de 20 de dezembro de 2018) | number-plate driving ban | not in our sources |
| Zona de Máxima Restrição de Circulação — ZMRC (Decreto nº 56.920, de 8 de abril de 2016; limites e horários fixados pela Portaria nº 137/18-SMT.GAB, alterada pela Portaria nº 154/18-SMT.GAB) | heavy vehicle ban | 130.16 BRL |
São Paulo closes its central ring to one pair of plate digits a day, at rush hour only. Monday takes plates ending 1 and 2, Tuesday 3 and 4, Wednesday 5 and 6, Thursday 7 and 8, Friday 9 and 0, from 07:00 to 10:00 and again from 17:00 to 20:00. Between and after those windows, and at every hour of Saturday, Sunday and a public holiday, the scheme bans nobody.
It applies to the area inside the Minianel Viário — the ring of ten named expressways and avenues the decree lists one by one, from the Marginal Tietê round to the Avenida Salim Farah Maluf — and it applies on the ring roads themselves, not only inside them. Two things make it unusual for a plate ban.
It is keyed to the plate alone: no emission class, no registration date, and it makes no difference where the car is licensed, so a hire car or a foreign plate is in the scheme on exactly the same terms as a São Paulo one.
And it is suspended often — for public holidays, for the eve of a long weekend, for a metro strike, sometimes for a single afternoon — each time by a dated portaria the CET lists in a public register we link below.
São Paulo closes most of its central area to lorries for sixteen hours of every working day. Inside the Zona de Máxima Restrição de Circulação — the ZMRC — no caminhão may drive from 05:00 to 21:00 Monday to Friday, or from 10:00 to 14:00 on Saturday. Public holidays are outside it, and so is every hour of Sunday.
This is a different scheme from the rodízio, and a lorry driver in São Paulo meets both: the rodízio bars one pair of plate digits for three hours twice a day inside the Minianel Viário, while the ZMRC bars lorries as a class, for far longer, over an area the city delimits street by street. The way in is an authorisation rather than a payment.
A lorry that needs to enter during the restricted hours must hold an Autorização Especial de Trânsito para Caminhões (AETC), granted in advance by the Departamento de Operação do Sistema Viário for one of about twenty named services — refuse collection, concrete, removals, market access, postal work, breakdown recovery, access to a parking space the operator owns or rents — each with its own permitted hours.
Small lorries help themselves: a Veículo Urbano de Carga, at most 2.20 m wide and 7.20 m long and built from January 2005, may use the ZMRC at any hour once registered. Outside the restricted hours no authorisation and no prior registration are needed at all, and cars, vans and motorcycles are never in this scheme.