Driving in Piraeus: Heavy vehicle ban

Piraeus, Greece · Heavy vehicle ban

Official name Περιορισμός κυκλοφορίας φορτηγών και ωράριο τροφοδοσίας στις κεντρικές οδούς του Δήμου Πειραιά (απόφαση 177/2022)

Not in force in Piraeus right nowTuesday, 13 October 2026 at 12:05 · Europe/Athens

  • Not in force Goods vehicles over 1.5 tonnes useful load — CIRCULATION on the fourteen named central streets
  • Not in force Goods vehicles over 1.5 tonnes useful load — LOADING AND UNLOADING on the fourteen named central streets

Starts Tuesday, 13 October 2026 at 14:30 local time.

Both rules are about a goods vehicle of more than 1.5 tonnes useful load. A car is never in this scheme at any hour, and neither is a lighter van — so a verdict of "in force" means the restriction exists at that moment, not that it reaches the reader's vehicle.

Driving and working are two different clocks over the same fourteen streets, and both are encoded above. A lorry reading "not in force" for loading at 10:45 is still inside the circulation ban until 11:00, so read the label on the rule that answers you.

The threshold is useful load, which is not the measurement the same decision uses in Athens. Nothing in the encoding can tell the two apart for a driver who knows only one figure for their vehicle.

The rule lives on fourteen named streets and we hold no geometry for them, so the warning is given at city level from a single anchor and over-warns across the whole of Piraeus and beyond. The decision says nothing about any other street in the municipality.

The six exemptions of part II subtract whole classes of vehicle and errand the encoding cannot see — service-plated public vehicles, medicines and hospital supplies, press distribution, documented supply to and from the Athens Commercial Triangle, building materials and concrete and lifting vehicles and urgent removals, and purely electric vehicles up to 2.5 tonnes gross. For any of those the schedule over-warns.

The decision names no public holiday, no weekend variation and no season, so the timetable runs the same clock on 15 August and on a Sunday. That is the decision's own silence, not a gap in our encoding — there is no holiday rule here to miss.

Operating times only, read from the source below. It does not check your vehicle.

What applies

Piraeus is the other half of the same Attica decision that governs Athens, and it is not a variant of it — it asks a different question about a different measurement on a named list of streets rather than across a municipality. Fourteen central avenues and streets of Piraeus, the waterfront ones among them, carry two rules, both aimed at goods vehicles whose USEFUL LOAD exceeds 1.5 tonnes.

The first is a supply timetable: on those streets such a vehicle may load and unload round the clock except between 07:00 and 10:30. The second is a circulation restriction, which is the stricter of the two and the one a driver is likelier to meet by accident: on those same streets a goods vehicle over 1.5 tonnes useful load is restricted from 07:00 to 11:00 and again from 14:30 to 16:00.

Nothing is charged, nothing is bought, and no exhaust class is mentioned anywhere — this scheme sorts vehicles by what they can carry and by the clock, and a Euro 6 lorry and a twenty-year-old one are the same vehicle to it. A car is never in it at any hour.

The exemptions that run through the whole instrument apply here too, and one of them is about the vehicle rather than the errand: a purely electric vehicle of up to 2.5 tonnes gross is outside the restrictions. The decision is open-ended — it runs from publication until a newer decision is issued — and two supplements in 2025 amended it without replacing it, neither of them touching Piraeus.

Source: Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο, read 2026-09-21
Full citation

Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο (National Printing House) — Εφημερίδα της Κυβερνήσεως, ΦΕΚ Β' 7084/31.12.2022: απόφαση αριθμ. 177/14.12.2022 του Περιφερειακού Συμβουλίου Αττικής, μέρος Ι περ. 3 (Δήμος Πειραιά), μέρος ΙΙ περ. i–vi and the closing clause on duration

Daily charge

Nothing is charged and there is nothing to buy. The Piraeus paragraph sets two clocks and one weight threshold and names no fee, no permit, no day pass and no toll, and neither does the rest of the instrument. There is no way to pay for one of the closed hours, and no register to join: the exemptions in part II describe vehicles and errands rather than a scheme a haulier can apply to.

The only sum of money anywhere in the decision is the penalty for breaching it, which is recorded in the penalty field.

When it operates

Two clocks over the same fourteen streets, and they are not the same clock. For SUPPLY — loading and unloading — a goods vehicle of more than 1.5 tonnes useful load may work round the clock except between 07:00 and 10:30. For CIRCULATION — simply driving along them — the same class of vehicle is restricted from 07:00 to 11:00 and from 14:30 to 16:00.

So a lorry that has waited out the loading ban until 10:30 still may not drive those streets until 11:00, and an afternoon delivery that is lawful to unload at 15:00 is not lawful to drive to. Both rules run every day of the week: the decision names no weekend, no public holiday, no season and no August, so the same clock applies on a Sunday in January and a Tuesday in August.

The threshold is ωφέλιμο φορτίο, useful load — what the vehicle may carry — and NOT the gross weight the same decision uses in Athens; the two limbs of one instrument measure two different things, and a vehicle can be on the wrong side of one and the right side of the other. Below 1.5 tonnes useful load, neither rule reaches the vehicle at any hour.

Source: Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο, read 2026-09-21
Full citation

Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο (National Printing House) — Εφημερίδα της Κυβερνήσεως, ΦΕΚ Β' 7084/31.12.2022: απόφαση 177/14.12.2022 του Περιφερειακού Συμβουλίου Αττικής, μέρος Ι περ. 3 — «καθορίζεται ωράριο τροφοδοσίας καθ’ όλο το 24ωρο πλην των ωρών από 07:00 π.μ. έως και 10:30 π.μ. για τα φορτηγά αυτοκίνητα ωφέλιμου φορτίου άνω του 1,5 τόνου. Στις παραπάνω οδούς ισχύει περιορισμός κυκλοφορίας των φορτηγών οχημάτων ωφέλιμου φορτίου άνω του 1,5 τόνου από 07:00 π.μ. έως 11:00 π.μ. και από 14:30 μ.μ. έως και 16:00 μ.μ.»

Area covered

Fourteen named streets of central Piraeus, not the municipality and not a drawn zone. The decision lists them: Ηρώων Πολυτεχνείου, Γρηγορίου Λαμπράκη, Βασιλέως Γεωργίου, Ακτή Μιαούλη, Ακτή Ποσειδώνος, 2ας Μεραρχίας, Γούναρη, Τσαμαδού, Εθνικής Αντιστάσεως, 34ου Συντάγματος, Ακτή Μουτσοπούλου, Ακτή Καλλιμασιώτη, Ακτή Θεμιστοκλέους and Ελευθερίου Βενιζέλου.

Five of the fourteen are the harbour front — the Ακτή names run along the Great Harbour and the ferry quays — so this is the traffic a visitor meets coming off a boat rather than an inland industrial ring. The decision gives no end points and no side streets: it names each avenue whole, and it says nothing at all about the rest of the Δήμος Πειραιώς, which is therefore not covered by this record.

Nothing in the instrument turns Piraeus into an area scheme, and nothing in it draws a perimeter, so a polygon would be a claim the Region never made.

The same decision's other limbs cover other places — the Municipality of Athens, the perimeter roads of the inner ring through Zografou, Egaleo, Kallithea, Nea Smyrni and Palaio Faliro, Leoforos Mesogeion outside Athens, and Ilioupoli, Galatsi, Dafni-Ymittos, Byronas and Irakleio Attikis — and none of them is this rule.

Source: Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο, read 2026-09-21
Full citation

Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο (National Printing House) — Εφημερίδα της Κυβερνήσεως, ΦΕΚ Β' 7084/31.12.2022: απόφαση 177/14.12.2022, μέρος Ι περ. 3, which lists the streets as «Ηρ. Πολυτεχνείου - Γρ. Λαμπράκη - Βασ. Γεωργίου - Ακτή Μιαούλη - Ακτή Ποσειδώνος - 2ας Μεραρχίας - Γούναρη - Τσαμαδού - Εθν. Αντιστάσεως - 34ου Συντάγματος - Ακτή Μουτσοπούλου - Ακτή Καλλιμασιώτη - Ακτή Θεμιστοκλέους - Ελευθερίου Βενιζέλου», with περ. 1, 2 and 4 to 6 for the places this record does not cover

Why there is no map here
This scheme is not an area, so a polygon would misrepresent how it works. The decision restricts fourteen named avenues and streets and says nothing about the streets between them, so a shape drawn round them would close a grid the Region left open — the opposite error from the usual one, and one that would tell a driver they are committing an offence on a street the instrument never mentions. The geometry that would fit is linear, and this corpus's boundary contract is a MultiPolygon, which is the same wall Recife's bus lanes met. The Region publishes no map of it in any form: www.patt.gov.gr answers HTTP 418 to robots.txt and to its home page, and the gazette, which is the channel that does answer us, publishes text. So the streets are carried in the area field by the publisher's own names and the city is warned from its anchor.
Petrol standard

There is no emission standard in this scheme. The Piraeus paragraph sorts goods vehicles by useful load and by the hour and by nothing else; fuel, Euro class, engine age and exhaust certification appear nowhere in the decision, so no sticker and no clean engine lets a lorry over 1.5 tonnes useful load drive Akti Miaouli at 09:00.

The recitals do give air quality as a reason — the Regional Council records that peak-hour traffic raises measured pollutant values and that reducing it will help — but the operative text turns that into a load rating and a clock.

The one propulsion test in the instrument is an exemption rather than a standard: part II vi) takes purely electric vehicles of up to 2.5 tonnes gross weight out of the restrictions, and that is recorded in how_to_comply where a driver will look for it.

Diesel standard

Not applicable, for the same reason as the petrol standard: the instrument contains no emission class of any kind, and a diesel goods vehicle is treated exactly as a petrol one of the same useful load. The only way propulsion changes the answer is the part II vi) exemption for purely electric vehicles up to 2.5 tonnes gross, which no diesel vehicle can reach.

Penalty if you do not comply
€150.00 The decision itself prints no figure. It cites the penalties of the last subparagraph of article 52 §8 of the 1999 Highway Code, and that Code was repealed on 13 September 2025; the €150 is the administrative fine the Code now in force sets for the category the same offence falls into. The amount is therefore read from the statute, not from the Attica decision, and the decision has not been updated to point at the new article.Source: Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο, read 2026-09-21
Full citation

Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο (National Printing House) — Εφημερίδα της Κυβερνήσεως, ΦΕΚ Α' 100/13.06.2025: ν. 5209/2025, the Greek Highway Code now in force. Article 108 §5 β) βα) prices a category Ε2-Α offence at «διοικητικό πρόστιμο εκατόν πενήντα (150) ευρώ»; article 55 §8, the successor of the provision the Attica decision cites, permits the fixing of supply hours for businesses, supermarkets and other shops and states «Η παράβαση της παρ. 16 του άρθρου 112, κατατάσσεται στην κατηγορία Ε2-Α»; article 112 §16 περ. ιγ) is the delegation this decision was taken under, in terms: «Με απόφαση των κατά περίπτωση αρμόδιων Περιφερειακών Συμβουλίων καθορίζεται το ωράριο τροφοδοσίας του δευτέρου εδαφίου της παρ. 8 του άρθρου 55» — the neighbouring περ. ιβ) is the ministerial lorry restriction on the national network, which is the limb article 55 §8 sends to ν. 3446/2006 instead. ⚠️ That sentence of article 55 §8 cites «παρ. 16 του άρθρου 116», an outdoor-advertising provision and plainly a slip for 112; the sentence that classifies the offence cites 112 correctly, and it is the one this figure rests on. Article 114 §4 keeps regulatory acts issued under the 1999 Code in force, which is why decision 177/2022 survives the repeal, and article 115 b) repeals that Code, with article 132 §1 putting the repeal three months after publication

How to comply
  • Read the vehicle's USEFUL LOAD, not its gross weight. The Piraeus threshold is ωφέλιμο φορτίο above 1.5 tonnes — what the vehicle is rated to carry. The Athens paragraph of the very same decision uses gross weight and a two-tonne line instead, so a vehicle can be inside one rule and outside the other, and carrying one city's number to the other is the mistake this instrument invites.
  • Check which of the two Piraeus clocks your journey is. Loading and unloading on the fourteen streets is barred from 07:00 to 10:30. Driving along them is barred from 07:00 to 11:00 and from 14:30 to 16:00. The circulation ban outlasts the loading ban by half an hour in the morning and adds an afternoon window the loading rule does not have.
  • The fourteen streets are the rule, and they include the harbour front. Ηρώων Πολυτεχνείου, Γρηγορίου Λαμπράκη, Βασιλέως Γεωργίου, Ακτή Μιαούλη, Ακτή Ποσειδώνος, 2ας Μεραρχίας, Γούναρη, Τσαμαδού, Εθνικής Αντιστάσεως, 34ου Συντάγματος, Ακτή Μουτσοπούλου, Ακτή Καλλιμασιώτη, Ακτή Θεμιστοκλέους and Ελευθερίου Βενιζέλου. The decision says nothing about the rest of Piraeus, so this is a route question rather than a zone question — plan the streets, not the city.
  • If you are driving a car you are not in this scheme at any hour, and neither is a light van below the 1.5-tonne useful-load line. Every operative sentence here is about φορτηγά αυτοκίνητα, goods vehicles.
  • Six exemptions run through the whole instrument, and only one is about the vehicle: purely electric vehicles of gross weight up to 2.5 tonnes are outside the restrictions. The other five are about the errand or the operator — state, municipal and public-utility lorries with service plates or visible service markings and vehicles hired by those services; lorries carrying medicines and hospital supplies; lorries distributing the daily and periodical press; vehicles supplying shops inside the Athens Commercial Triangle that can show it from their transport documents; and lorries carrying building materials, ready-mix concrete vehicles and lifting vehicles, which may circulate at other hours, as may unforeseen and urgent jobs such as office and household removals.
  • There is no holiday to plan around, because the decision grants none. It names no weekend variation, no public holiday and no season, so treat 15 August and a Sunday exactly like a Tuesday on these streets.
  • The fine is not in the decision. It cites the penalties of the last subparagraph of article 52 §8 of the 1999 Highway Code, which was repealed on 13 September 2025; the Code now in force classifies the same offence as category Ε2-Α and prices that at €150. Regulatory acts made under the old Code expressly remain in force, so the decision itself is unaffected by the repeal — only its penalty citation is out of date.
Source: Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο, read 2026-09-21
Full citation

Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο (National Printing House) — Εφημερίδα της Κυβερνήσεως: ΦΕΚ Β' 7084/31.12.2022, απόφαση 177/14.12.2022 του Περιφερειακού Συμβουλίου Αττικής, μέρος Ι περ. 2 and 3 and μέρος ΙΙ περ. i–vi; and ΦΕΚ Α' 100/13.06.2025 (ν. 5209/2025), articles 55 §8, 108 §5, 112 §16, 114 §4, 115 and 132, for the penalty and the repeal

Sources

Next scheduled re-check: 2026-12-20.

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