DMV wait complaints pile up

Legislators compelled to act



COMING TO A COMPLETE STOP—Patrons experience delays to enter the Thousand Oaks DMV office on Aug. 7. Visitors to the DMV have experienced longer than usual wait times in recent months. MICHAEL COONS/Acorn Newspapers

COMING TO A COMPLETE STOP—Patrons experience delays to enter the Thousand Oaks DMV office on Aug. 7. Visitors to the DMV have experienced longer than usual wait times in recent months. MICHAEL COONS/Acorn Newspapers

For years, comedians have gotten plenty of mileage from digs at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Check out Disney’s animated film “Zootopia” and its depiction of DMV employees as sloths, for example. But recent wait times at DMV offices throughout the state are no joke.

Just ask Heather Romano and her daughter Lindsey. The Thousand Oaks duo visited their local DMV office June 29 so the 15-year-old could apply for her learner’s permit.

They’d had an appointment on June 28, but a paperwork problem necessitated their return the next day. Because the next available appointment was weeks away, they decided to drop in and wait. And wait they did: It would be 6½ hours before they were done.

“Everyone knows when you go to the DMV it’s not going to be quick, but we walked up at 9 a.m. and left at 3:30 p.m.,” Heather Romano said. “We even had plenty of time to run out and get lunch and eat it in our car.”

It’s not just the T.O. office where customers are waiting. In Simi Valley, Jill Ward-Marshall said it took her and her daughter five hours to complete the learner’s permit paperwork.

Residents from Westlake Village to Camarillo have faced lines coming out the door and trailing down sidewalks at locations in Ventura County and the San Fernando Valley.

The department blames, in part, the federal government’s recently instituted Real ID requirement. Beginning in October 2020, traditional driver’s licenses won’t be enough to board a flight. A Real ID will be required (or a passport or some other form of TSA-approved documentation).

While many other DMV services can be processed online or completed at the American Automobile Association (AAA), obtaining a Real ID requires a visit to the DMV.

As a result, the department has experienced an unusually high volume of traffic in recent months as Californians stream in to apply for the federally approved form of identification.

“We apologize for the increased wait times,” said Marty Greenstein, DMV public information officer, in an email. “We understand that delays are extremely frustrating, and we are working hard to speed things up.”

DMV employees are also facing a learning curve as they transition to a new queuing system, Greenstein said. Customers now enter their personal information on computer terminals before getting connected to the proper employee.

Greenstein said that a wait of three hours or longer is still the exception, not the norm.

In a DMV informal survey reported online, the average wait time for Ventura County offices, with data collected during various times of day during the first week of August, was 21 minutes for those with appointments and an hour and 50 minutes for those without.

At the Winnetka office, the closest south of Ventura County, average wait times were 23 minutes for appointments and an hour and 12 minutes without.

The figures do not include the initial “triage” line visitors must first stand in to be given a spot in another line for the particular service they need, nor any time waiting after their number has been called.

The wait times for any particular office can be found on the DMV’s website, dmv.ca.gov.

While the wait times are not all as bad as the Romanos’ experienced, they are up, the DMV acknowledges.

At an Aug. 7 hearing before the California Assembly, DMV Director Jean Shiomoto apologized and said her goal is for the department to return to normal waiting times—15 minutes for customers with appointments and 45 minutes for those without—by the end of 2018.

To address the problem, the DMV has added Saturday service at 60 field offices, including those in Thousand Oaks and Ventura; opened some DMV offices earlier; hired nearly 500 new employees; and increased temporary staffing and overtime by 72,000 hours statewide since January.

The length of time it takes to book an appointment depends on the office and the service needed. When The Acorn researched appointments Aug. 1, the lag time for getting an appointment for registration renewal at each of the Ventura County offices and the Winnetka office was a couple of weeks.

Getting a slot for a Real ID would take longer at every one of the offices surveyed.

In T.O., the first appointment available was Oct. 16—a 2½-month wait. Attempting to schedule a Real ID appointment at the Oxnard office garnered a “Sorry, no appointment is available at this office” message.

The DMV’s system only allows scheduling of appointments three months in advance and gives the apology message when all the slots for the next three months are full, Greenstein said.

Other help may be on the way from state legislators, some of whom have called for a complete audit of the department. And, after legislators gave the DMV $16.6 million in June to target the wait times, others wanted to add to that figure.

At last week’s Assembly hearing, Shiomoto requested an additional $26 million, but local legislators said on Tuesday they’d have to do more research before deciding what needs to be done. Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin (D-Camarillo) said her constituents have complained to her about the long waiting lines. She said one of her family members had a four-hour wait during a recent visit to the DMV.

“The extensive wait times at the DMV since the inception of the Real ID are totally unacceptable,” Irwin said.

“Opening on Saturday with increased staffing is a step in the right direction, but much more needs to be done. I look forward to supporting a time extension on license renewals and other additional steps that must be taken.”

The time extension will be the focus of a bill proposed by state Sen. Patricia Bates (R-Laguna Niguel), who announced Aug. 3 that she will propose urgency legislation that will give an additional 90 days on all license renewals set to expire this year. The Bates bill will also extend the deadline for new Californians to register their out-of-state cars.

Meanwhile, drivers will just have to wait and see if the recent fixes do the job.

For Heather and Lindsey Romano, the long wait at the DMV was worth it: Lindsey, now the proud owner of a learner’s permit, has hit the road.