
Secret DMV office near California Capitol serves lawmakers and their staff - mmt
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article216408570.html
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windows_tips
69 minute average wait time for DMV services statewide. Is it true that a
competitive, market-based DMV industry would not produce better results for
"customers"?

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mc32
That 69 minutes is probably for appointments set in advance. Without an
apppointment, at least in the Bay Area, it’s going to be about 3 hours.

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gumby
Huh? In my experience, when I have an appointment I have only waited for a
couple of minutes. Not that I have to go to the DMV in person much these days.

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mc32
Hmm, anecdata from three people in the SF area DMVs. Maybe it's not so bad in
other areas of the state?

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throwaway413
Been twice in the last month in San Diego and it was a 4h wait and a 4h30m
wait at the North Park office respectively.

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SamReidHughes
I did Clairemont in April, arrived at 6:45 AM, got processed pretty quickly
after it opened at 8 AM. I was maybe 15-20th in line.

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mmt
That was already 75 minutes waiting for opening (irrelevant if you were still
the last person in line _at_ opening, but I very much doubt that). How much
longer before you were actually served?

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SamReidHughes
I wasn't keeping track of the actual time, so "pretty quick" is the best I can
do. Probably 8:15 or 8:30-ish.

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mmt
So 15-30 minutes (assuming you got your "start here" number tickets
essentially right away after opening) according to what the DMV measures,
presumably at an off-peak time, which means, for a 69 minute average, with an
even distribution, there would be people waiting 108-138 minutes.

Even just tacking on the 75 minutes the DMV "don't have a way to track" [1]
without scaling it up, that gets 3-3.5 hours, which isn't too far off from the
4+ hour anecdata in other comments.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17743559](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17743559)
[https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/California-
lawmaker-a...](https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/California-lawmaker-
accuses-DMV-of-fudging-13080384.php)

