If you’re headed to the Elizabethtown office of the Division of Motor Vehicles, prepare to be there a while.
The Bladen County site has one of the longest wait times in the state — three and a half hours after check-in, according to a report that tallied wait times for 28 days this summer.
Two people staff the Elizabethtown office, said Shannon Williams, the DMV’s district manager for southeastern North Carolina. One employee was transferred to another office in April, Williams said, and the position wasn’t filled until July.
“Only having a single person on staff can slow down operations, especially around times when they need to break for a lunch period,” she said.
The DMV conducted the wait-time review at offices across the state based on its new check-in system. Statewide, the average wait time was two hours and 45 minutes.
Some customers who live in the state’s largest cities go to DMV offices in smaller towns hoping to avoid long lines, Williams said. That could be true for the Elizabethtown office, where Williams said only 10% of customers live in the town. In Wilmington, about 50 miles southeast of Elizabethtown, two DMV offices had wait times between two and three hours.
But DMV customers had shorter waits elsewhere in the Border Belt. Whiteville and Lumberton both had wait times of one hour and 26 minutes. The wait Laurinburg wait was an hour and four minutes.
Williams said new employees at the Lumberton and Laurinburg offices are going through training.
State Auditor Dave Boliek released two DMV audits in August to “examine the current operational challenges affecting the most forward-facing agency in state government.” Boliek said North Carolina’s population has grown 29% in the last 20 years, while the number of driver license examiner positions has increased by just 10%.
About 160 of the state’s 710 examiner positions were vacant, Boliek said.
The agency is trying to make changes to streamline processes and reduce customers’ wait times.
Four new DMV offices are planned to open across the state, including in Sampson and Brunswick counties. Williams said the new Brunswick office will likely have six employees, while the Sampson office will have three.
The DMV will hire 97 employees over the next two years, said spokesperson Marty Homan.
Other changes are aimed at keeping customers out of DMV offices. Some driver’s license renewal processes, including for Real IDs, are moving online.
“Hopefully those will help improve the wait times and process of the customers getting in and out as quickly as possible,” Williams said.