Colonia is the gateway from Buenos Aires: the ferry drops thousands of visitors with their own car in Colonia del Sacramento every weekend, Route 1 takes them to Montevideo and Route 21 to Carmelo and the port of Nueva Palmira, through which the region’s grain leaves. Freight trucks, Argentine cars and tourism fleets share the department’s routes. Urban fines are issued by the Intendencia and collected through SUCIVE; those on Routes 1 and 21 outside the cities, by the Policía Caminera.

Context and authorities

Traffic fines are administrative sanctions set out in Law 18.191 and in the departmental codes, expressed in adjustable units and applied by the intendencia of the department where the infraction occurs; the Policía Caminera issues those on national routes. Since the creation of SUCIVE the fine debt is checked and paid in any department together with the vehicle tax, and an unpaid fine blocks the transfer of the vehicle.

The Intendencia’s Transit Directorate issues fines in Colonia del Sacramento, Carmelo, Juan Lacaze and Nueva Helvecia, with metered parking and checks in the historic quarter at weekends; a defence is filed with the Intendencia and payment is made through SUCIVE. Fines on Argentine plates are collected on the spot or remain recorded against the vehicle for its next entry through the port.

What the API returns for this jurisdiction

In Colonia a plate is sent to the Uruguay fines API, which walks its integrated sources and returns each fine with the authority that applied it:

  • Intendencia or authority and fine number exactly as the source publishes them.
  • Date, location when reported and article infringed.
  • Amount in adjustable units and pesos, with the status current at the source.
  • Coverage per source and a partial-result flag when any failed to answer.

How to check a plate in Colonia

A plate is checked by hand at SUCIVE and, for the detail and the defence, at the Colonia Intendencia portal. The API does the same round at scale and returns each fine with the authority that applied it, so verification becomes part of the fleet process rather than a spreadsheet.

What to watch if you run a fleet in Colonia

A rent-a-car delivering cars at the port of Colonia to Argentine visitors receives the fines of the historic quarter and Route 1 weeks later, when the customer has already returned by ferry; the plate lookup at the return of each rental, with the result stored next to the contract, charges them while the guarantee is still valid.

A grain fleet descending to Nueva Palmira at harvest piles up Caminera and Intendencia fines on trucks rotating between drivers; the monthly plate lookup, stored per authority, assigns them to the trip’s driver.

How to integrate

Each vehicle is sent in a POST, with the jurisdictions to include if you do not want to query all of them. The response accepts the job and the result is retrieved by status lookup or arrives by webhook once the sources finish answering. The vehicle lookup quality guide explains how to handle a source that did not answer.

JSONIllustrative example, not a contract.
{
  "plate": "SBC1234",
  "jurisdictions": [
    "UY-CO"
  ]
}

Limits and considerations

  • Fines from the Policía Caminera on national routes are processed by the Ministry of the Interior and are also collected through SUCIVE.
  • Amounts in adjustable units are converted at the current value; the final amount is set by the intendencia at the time of payment.
  • A source that does not answer is reported as such, never as an absence of fines.
  • The API neither pays fines nor handles defences; it delivers information to decide.

Sources and further reading