In an effort to alleviate long lines that have plagued its major branches since last week, the state Department of Motor Vehicles said it will temporarily suspend operations at its four photo license centers and relocate staff to the branches.
The photo licensing centers, located in Middletown, Derby, Milford and Stamford, offer license renewal and some registration services.
During the closure, drivers can complete those transactions on the DMV’s website or at any AAA office in the state.
A list of AAA locations is available here.
“We know it is an inconvenience for those people who use them two days a week, but the staff is needed to help in our other offices where the customer volume is substantially higher,” DMV Commissioner Andres Ayala Jr. said in a statement.
The agency originally extended to Oct. 10 deadlines for renewal deadlines that fell during the Aug. 11-Aug. 17 closure.
Now, the state will give that same extension to any license, registration or ID card that expired since Aug. 11, the DMV said.
DMV customers have been greeted by long lines at the DMV’s major branches since the agency’s hub branches reopened last Tuesday, following a weeklong, multimillion-dollar software upgrade.
Some DMV customers waited as long as seven hours, according to NBC Connecticut.
Ayala said the delays are being created by employees learning the new software system, which has increased the average time to process a customer from nine minutes to 16 minutes.
Leading up to the software upgrade, Ayala had urged customers to wait to visit the reopened branches, or to conduct transactions online where possible. The agency said more than 5,100 customers that visited a branch in the past week— nearly one-third of total transaction volume over that time — could have completed their business online.
