Line-Dancing at the DMV

By HUGO MARTIN

June 5, 2001 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Inside the Department of Motor Vehicles office in Arleta--the busiest in the state--nearly 30 people stood in a line one recent morning to renew or get new driver’s licenses. In another line, 20 or so people waited to register vehicles.

In between was purgatory: an information line with about 10 people waiting to find out in which of the two lines they belonged.

After 45 minutes of navigating the throngs, Martha Benavides, of Los Angeles, came out of the San Fernando Valley office having renewed her driver’s license.

“It was pretty good--for the DMV,” she said of the wait.

Spoken like a true Californian. That kind of accommodating attitude has become standard equipment for motorists when it comes to dealing with the DMV.

Statewide, the average wait time at DMV field offices increased by about eight minutes last year to 25 minutes for transactions involving driver’s licenses and 23 for vehicle registration procedures, according to DMV officials.

The reason for the longer waits: New efforts to weed out fraud have increased the workload for DMV staffers.

As expected, the wait is even longer in Southern California, home to the 10 busiest DMV offices in the state. In those 10 offices--all in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties--the wait is 31 minutes for driver’s licenses and 37 minutes for vehicle registrations.

The DMV has tried to reduce the wait with electronic advances instead of with the more expensive alternative: building new field offices. In fact, the number of DMV field offices has dropped from 171 in 1996 to 170 today. During the same five years, the number of registered vehicles in the state increased nearly 10%--from 26 million to 28.5 million.

The DMV strategy has been to encourage people to do their DMV business from home.

Motorists have long been able to make appointments over the phone or renew car registrations by mail. Last year, the DMV teamed up with IBM to allow motorists to use the Internet to make appointments and renew vehicle registrations.

Although 17,000 motorists per month register their vehicles via the Internet, this option has its limits. It only serves those who have access to the Internet and then only those whose car insurance company has agreed to participate in the program. The DMV will only register a vehicle with proof of insurance. Only five insurance companies--Mercury Insurance, Farmer’s Insurance, the Automobile Club of Southern California, State Automobile Club and 21st Century Insurance--have agreed to hook up electronically with the DMV Web site to do so.

Another drawback: Registering a vehicle via the Internet costs an extra $4. When the $4 fee was added last July, the number of motorists using the Web site dropped by about 23%.

By next year, the DMV hopes to launch a “voice recognition” system that allows drivers to make an appointment by phone without talking to another human being. A computer answers the calls, deciphers the time and day that a caller requests, and schedules the appointment.

But such timesaving advances have been stifled by an anti-fraud campaign that the DMV launched last year.

Under the effort, motorists who request a replacement license or identification card must show photo identification. If they don’t have one, a DMV technician must retrieve a prior photo from the files. There are no exceptions to this rule.

In addition, DMV officials will double-check all Social Security numbers with the Social Security Administration.

And so, the wait continues.

The Arleta office topped the list of busiest offices by serving 467,548 customers in 2000. That’s the equivalent of processing the entire population of Kansas City, Mo., in one single-story, stucco building. But Arleta doesn’t have the longest waits. The average wait time is only 19 minutes for license procedures and 27 minutes for car registrations.

The really long waits are at the DMV office on Hope Street near downtown Los Angeles, where people wait an average of 91 minutes to register a car and 34 minutes to get a license.

Another horrid wait can be expected at the Fullerton office in Orange County: 81 minutes to register a car and 86 minutes to get a license.

DMV spokesman Steve Haskins attributes the long waits to an overall population increase and the continued practice of many drivers of walking into a DMV office without an appointment.

“I think that a lot of customers feel they would rather see a human face,” he said.

As for the huge crowds at the Arleta office, DMV officials attribute that to several factors. First, the northeast San Fernando Valley has experienced a huge population increase in the last decades, particularly among Latinos. Secondly, the Arleta office is the only DMV office in the Valley that is open Saturdays.

Arleta DMV officials make the lines move a bit faster by employing a lobby monitor who roams the office, ensuring that everyone has the proper paperwork and is in the right line.

On a recent Thursday morning, several motorists at the Arleta office complained about the huge crowds but complimented the staff for efficiency.

Stacy Berger of Sun Valley said she spent more than six hours waiting at the Glendale office a few days earlier to straighten out a problem with her car registration. She said she finally gave up and made an appointment at the Arleta office.

At the Arleta office, her problem was taken care of in 15 minutes, she said.

“If this is the busiest office, it is the best-managed office,” she said.

But Berger was one of the few who made appointments that morning. Most everyone else were walk-in customers who stood in zigzagging lines throughout the office.

“There are always a lot of people,” Miguel Barajas of Arleta said in Spanish. He and his friend Pablo Martin waited nearly an hour and a half to replace stolen registration papers for his car.

Still, Barajas was philosophical about the long wait.

“This was not bad,” he said. “I’ve come by when the line is all the way outside the door and I said: ‘Forget it.’ ”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Stand in Line

The busiest DMV offices last year. The waiting times, in minutes, for registering a car and getting a license are shown in parentheses:

Office Customers

Arleta: 467,548 (27/19)

West Covina: 444,757 (46/52)

Glendale: 405,145 (45/40)

Montebello: 372,376 (15/16)

Fullerton: 368,785 (81/86)

Bellflower: 366,361 (45/46)