Tens of thousands of young drivers in NC can now avoid a trip to a DMV license office
The rite of passage for young drivers in North Carolina of swapping out their provisional license for a regular Class C one has always involved a mandatory trip to the DMV.
Not anymore.
The N.C. Division of Motor Vehicles now allows drivers with valid provisional licenses to go online to get their regular ones. The full provisional license that teens get when they’re 16 or 17 can be switched for a Class C license when they turn 18, though the provisional doesn’t expire until they’re 21.
Drivers who let that provisional license expire now have up to a year before they’re compelled to renew it. And now they can renew it online.
The changes are part of a broader effort by the DMV to reduce lines and wait times at its driver’s license offices. More than 148,000 drivers with provisional licenses qualified for their regular Class C license as of May 19, meaning the new policy could result in that many fewer people standing in line at DMV offices.
Also new, people who let their state-issued identification expire now have a year to renew online; up to now, renewing an expired state ID also required a trip to a license office. That change applies to the nearly 84,700 people whose state IDs had been expired less than a year as of May 19.
“Allowing these services to be completed online should help shorten lines and wait times at our offices by getting folks that would previously have to come to the office out of the line altogether,” DMV Commissioner Wayne Goodwin said in a written statement.
A standard state ID or Class C driver’s license is good for eight years for people age 18 to 65 and can be renewed once online before an office visit is required.
The new renewal policies are among several steps the DMV is taking to try to ease crowding at its offices and make the most of its depleted workforce. This month the agency began posting current wait times at all 115 of its driver’s license offices statewide, to help walk-in customers to decide whether they want to try another office or wait another day.
Also this month, the DMV now sees customers with appointments only in the mornings; after noon, customers see a DMV agent on a first-come, first-served basis. Walk-in customers are also welcome in the mornings, but people with appointments take priority.
Goodwin says more people wanted the option of showing up without an appointment. At the same time, he said the agency was finding that up to a quarter of people who made appointments weren’t showing up for them.
Still to come, the DMV plans to deploy its first computer kiosks in public places that allow customers to do DMV business that doesn’t require an office visit, such as renew a license. The DMV finds that more than half of customers are still visiting offices for transactions they could probably complete online and hopes the convenience of a kiosk will encourage some of them to skip the trip.
The agency will test the kiosk idea later this summer with about 20 of them in places that are accessible 24-hours a day, such as grocery stores.
Saturday hours return for the summer
Summer is the DMV’s busiest season, in part because students take advantage of free time to try to get licenses before school starts in the fall. To try to handle the increased demand, the agency will open 16 of its driver’s license offices on Saturday mornings from June 3 through Aug. 26.
Goodwin says he ultimately wants to expand Saturday office hours beyond the summer and at more places, but the DMV doesn’t have enough workers for that now.
In the Triangle, the only offices open on Saturday mornings this summer will be in Raleigh, at 3231 Avent Ferry Road and 2431 Spring Forest Road. Offices with Saturday hours in the Charlotte area this summer include two in Charlotte, at 9711 David Taylor Drive and 201 West Arrowood Road, and ones at 12101 Mount Holly-Huntersville Road in Huntersville and 3122 U.S. 74 West in Monroe.
They will be open from 8 a.m. to noon.
This story was originally published May 31, 2023 at 11:00 AM.
