I’ll bet that’s a pretty universal experience these days in most states outside of small towns.
Said another way, they issue appointments equal to maybe 90 or 95% of their actual production capacity per hour or day or whatever. Everybody who doesn’t have an appointment is queueing for that slack 5 or 10% of capacity.
The fact the non-appointment queues are long and the service times are horrible is simply proof they don’t have enough productive capacity. More clerks & more workstations would trivially solve that problem. If there was budget (read political will) to solve it. Which tells us where the real problem is.
The experience in my province is quite different from the US examples mentioned by other posters.
To start with, we have mandatory government no fault car insurance. No private insurance. All vehicle insurance, driver’s licences, car plates, and so on, are administered by the Crown corp that has a monopoly on insurance.
Socialism !!!
But…
Our government has harnessed the private sector to administer it.
Any private insurance broker can apply to be a broker for the car insurance, and the related licences, car plates, etc.
So the market ensures that there are service providers all over the province. Any place that is big enough to have an insurance broker selling house insurance, life insurance, etc, will have a place where people can go to get their licence and plates renewed.
I was in our local broker’s office renewing my house insurance once, and an American who had just moved to Canada came in to get his driver’s licence. It took him 10 minutes, start to finish. He couldn’t believe it.
As he was leaving, he said, « You folks may be socialists, but damn, you’re efficient! »
My most recent DMV interaction to get a Real ID was less than satisfactory. Arriving at my appointed time I was directed to a kiosk and told to fill out the application online (why couldn’t I have done that at home?). Finished with that I went back to the counter to provide my proof of identity. They wouldn’t accept my birth certificate because it didn’t have the “official” embossed stamp.
I explained that I had been using it for 50 years without a problem. Nope, you have to get an official copy. So I went home and got my passport, which they accepted. I didn’t bother to tell them that I used my “non official” birth certificate as proof of identity to get the passport. I guess Uncle Sam isn’t as picky as the folks at the DMV.
In Pennsylvania, you can renew your driver’s license online. They will send you a camera card in the mail. When you receive that, you have to go into the DMV to have your picture taken, and you get your license about 5 minutes after they finish taking your picture.
You don’t need an appointment around here. If you go on off-hours, you’ll probably have a few minutes at most to wait before getting your picture taken. If you go at peak times, you might have 15 or 20 minutes or so to wait. Getting your picture/license is a separate line from everything else. It moves quickly.
Had to get my EDL renewed last week, and since WA only lets you renew online every other time, that meant I had to go into the DOL (Department of Licensing, which is what it’s called here).
I made an appointment online, checked in at the front desk, and was given a number. My number got called about 2 seconds later and 7 minutes after that I was out the door.
Compared to my experiences in California 20 years ago it was a walk in the park.
Very long ago, the DMV equivalent here in Ontario was pretty bad because of long lines, largely because everyone’s plates renewed at the same time (I think at the end of each calendar year). You also got new physical plates, and had to remove and throw out the old ones and attach the new ones. It was an incredibly bad system.
Things gradually changed and now plates and driver’s licenses are a pleasure to deal with. They recently eliminated all renewal fees for private passenger car plates, as well as the annual stickers. They briefly required free online renewal anyway in order to get a statement of insurance, but decided that was pointless, so now there is no renewal process for license plates at all. When my driver’s license came up for renewal a couple of years ago, I was able to do it online. I paid the fee via credit card and they sent me the new license using the existing photo on file. I renewed my health card online the same way (there is no fee for that).
So yes, everything is now super easy. And if I do need to visit the local Service Ontario office (which handles most things related to government documentation, not just motor vehicle things) it’s never crowded, probably because I now live in a distant suburb far from the madding crowds of the Big City. But because of all the online services, I very rarely need to go there.
I think Illinois’s been pretty good for 15 years or so. Jesse White was Secretary of State and ran successfully on a ‘Make the DMV better’ ticket. He retired last term with a very favorable approval rating, deserved, IMO. My own visit earlier this year for a RealID appointment was very, very easy.
My last few in-person BMV visits have been well-organized, quick, and often even cheerful. All except the last one were in Madison County, Indiana. The most recent, about a year ago, was in Elkhart County, Indiana. I’ll be doing it again soon, because my driver’s license has expired. I no longer drive, so I’ll be getting a state ID.
In Oregon I can do almost everything on line. Renew my car’s registration and they will send the new tags and documents in the mail. They would have sent me new license plates if needed. Renewed my driver’s license. As long as you haven’t moved and all the other info is the same, it came in the mail. Not good for Real ID, but as long as you don’t need that you are fine. It expires now in 2030 and I will probably have to go in person to renew it then.
Everything is done on-line now. You know what the DMV employees are doing on their computers while you stand there? The same thing that most people could do at home. Using a better password. A person should never have to go to the DMV unless you have a physical document, like a siged title, that they need to see.
And even then, scan and send ought to work for nearly everything & everyone.
If they don’t need to see your face live real time there’s zero need to be there. I’d much rather they accept a notarization than need to see an in-person sig.
As I’ve mentioned I need to go back about once a decade for an eye test. And of course I needed to go there in person many years ago for the driving test when I first got my license.
The Michigan Secretary of State is efficient and convenient. 90% of the time you can do your transaction online. For plate renewals you also have the option of using kiosks in some of the larger stores or outside the Secretary of State office. You only have to renew your drivers license in person every other renewal so that can be done online as well. If you need other services, make an appointment. Check in when you get there and you’ll get a text when it’s your turn.
In my experience, the folks are nice and competent enough, but their scheduling and queue management process is atrocious. Recently:
-I went online to schedule an appointment to get a title replacement, and booked the closest time available, two weeks away.
-I show up the morning of my appointment about 20 minutes early, and have to get in line to ‘check in’. This line is six people deep, and includes both scheduled people and walk-ins.
-Because some folks in the check in line need some extra help (and check in includes process review and form preparation), I don’t get to check in for well over a half hour, close to 20 minutes past my appointment time.
-They are serving everyone, walk-ins and scheduled folks, in the order in which they check in. So all the walk ins who were in line ahead of me were in and out before I got helped.
Why have people sign up for appointments if you will not honor them (check-in will take an arbitrary amount of time based on how many people show up at a particular moment and how complex their needs are), and if you put everyone in the same first come first serve line based on when they walk through the door?
There were plenty of more convenient times for me than the one I scheduled… apparently I could have just shown up at any time and been seen.
NH was fantastic. Most of the routine stuff is handled by the municipality, which really spreads out the demand, so it’s never a very long wait.
MA has been a mixed bag. It’s been mostly OK for routine stuff, but when I’ve had an issue getting it resolved was a nightmare:
I brought with me from NH a car that I bought from a MA dealer. This is common, and the dealer will deliver the car to you in NH to avoid the MA sales tax. This is legal. If you pick the car up in MA, you have to pay the tax. When I moved to MA, they somehow knew it was a MA car, and they wanted proof that I took delivery in NH or else they wanted me to pay the tax on the original purchase price. I fought and fought with them. Finally, I was ready to give up and just pay the tax so I could get on with life. I went into the DMV prepared to write them a check. THAT clerk made no such request and just gave me the plates and registration. Sometimes you’re the pigeon, and sometimes you’re the statue.
The other issue was when I renewed my registration online and it never came. I called them, and they wanted me to pay a lost registration fee. For something they failed to send me. Again, much arguing ensued. So I stopped into the DMV branch and told the woman there what had happened. She simply printed me a new one, no charge.
So, I mean, in both cases I got what I wanted. But it sure didn’t seem like the left hand knew what the right hand was doing.
NY DMV used to be horrible, like plan to spend at least 2 hours on line(s) horrible. They even had a line to get to the line you wanted to stand in.
But that has all changed. Many things can be done totally online now, or at least partially done on line and you can come in with the popper paperwork ready to go, and some DMV’s are no longer walk in but you need a reservation which really keeps the waiting to a minimum. However they still will allow for walk in emergencies such as a lost or stolen driver’s license replacement.
The Schenectady DMV works fairly smoothly. You go to a window, and explain why you’re there. They give you a number. It seems the other windows specialize: some do licenses; others do plates. It move pretty well.
When I went to get a Real ID, I was in and out in about a half hour. It helped that I had all the paperwork, but I was called relatively quickly.
Good to know. When I lived in NJ I remember long car lines at the Lawrenceville inspection station on Route 1 - then half the time you’d fail for smog and have to go to a private reinspection station.
For the current experience, I live in California now, and it is a breeze. I’m old enough to have to retake the written test, but you can do that online as part of a refresher course. Trivial. And if you are with it enough to make an appointment far enough ahead, it takes very little time. I was there maybe half an hour this time, when I got my RealID three years ago I was out and done five minutes after my official appointment time. You can scan your documents and send them in to be approved before you go, so no surprises. I used my passport. My birth certificate probably wouldn’t be accepted, it being written in cuneiform.
