Drivers learn to wait out the DMV: license-renewal lines are provoking frustration, anxiety.

Amherst-resident Don Willis got his driver's license renewed on his third visit in as many weeks to the Division of Motor Vehicles station in Milford. When he went there the first time, at 9 a.m. on a Thursday morning, he found he was already the 32nd person in line

"So I went home, and the next week I went over there and I was number 52," he said. The following Thursday, he managed to be first in line by arriving at 6:45 a.m., or a full hour and 15 minutes before the station opened.

"By the time they opened the door there were over 40 people in line," he said. "At least five appeared to be over 70 years old." Most had been there at least once before in an effort to obtain or renew a driver's license, he said.

The line extended into the parking lot, and before the station opened a uniformed DMV official came and began yelling at the applicants to get in line on the sidewalk, Willis said.

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"I was a senior drill instructor in the Army, and he talked worse than I ever talked to any of my trainees," Willis said, adding that the official yelled at and intimidated a pair of elderly women who appeared confused about where to go. It was an ordeal that the people in line, including many who had already been standing there for over an hour, did not deserve, he said.

"There wasn't a lavatory, there wasn't a shelter, there wasn't a seat for these people," he said. "There was no provision for these people who were 75 to 85 years old to make them at all comfortable."

Once inside the door, Willis noticed a small sign that said there would be no driver's test that day. The people waiting in line had no way of knowing that, he said. Mark Gagnon of New Ipswich was in line with his 16-year-old son, who was hoping to obtain his license that day.

"It's really ridiculous," said Gagnon. "You had to show up at 6 o'clock in the morning, or there was no chance of getting in there"

He said his wife had taken their son there for his driver's test the previous week. "She showed up at 7:45 and didn't even get in. They turned her right away and told her there were no tests available--after she'd taken a day off from work."

Both Gagnon and his wife came back with their son during a week when they were on vacation to avoid losing further time at work.

"I've never seen something like that," said Gagnon, a former Massachusetts resident who has lived in New Hampshire for 17 years. "In Massachusetts, you make an appointment, you go in and get out."

An official at the DMV station in Milford confirmed that no appointments for the driver's tests are taken over the phone, which means that people often have a long wait in line just to find out they have to come back another day.

Pam Woodward a retired schoolteacher in Concord, brought her 85-year-old mother, a Milford resident, to the Milford DMV on the date indicated on her mother's renewal notice Because of her age, Woodward's mother would have to take the road test to renew her license. After a wait of about half to three-quarters of an hour, Woodward was told by an official at the station that there were no more openings for tests that day. They would have to come back again.

"He said, 'It may take four or five or six times, I don't know,'" Woodward said. She drove down from Concord the following week and arrived shortly before 7 a.m. to hold a place in line for her mother. When the station opened at 8, she discovered there would be no chance to take the test that day, either. Finally she managed to get an appointment for her mother for 10:15 a.m. the following day."

The DMV no longer issues the license at the station, but gives out a temporary paper license good for 60 days. The laminated plastic licenses are then mailed to motorists at their residence.

The division advises people who are traveling with the temporary license to have a passport or some other form of identification with them in case the temporary license doesn't satisfy security officials at airports, Woodward said. "But what about people who don't have passports?" she said.

'Anxiety-producing'

The Milford facility is by no means the only DMV office provoking such frustration. For instance, dozens of residents who responded to a Web query posted last month by Foster's Daily Democrat said their time at DMV offices in Dover Point, Epping and Rochester also were marred by long lines, poor customer service and bureaucracy that left them frustrated and angry.

Katie Daley who handles media inquires at the Division of Motor Vehicles in Concord, said the temporary licenses have been issued because the division is adding three new security features to licenses before they are mailed to the motorists. Mailing the licenses also increases the likelihood that they are going to bona fide residents of the state, she said.

"When we gave the licenses over the counter there was no way to be 100 percent sure," Daley said.

There have been problems, she acknowledged with the printing on the temporary licenses becoming smudged and blurred, reducing their usefulness for identification purposes.

"We have received a couple of complaints that that's been going on," Daley said. "I know our licensing division is working on that."

People who have that problem "can call us or come in and arrange to get a new temporary license," she said. But the temporary licenses are not the reason for longer than usual lines at the motor vehicles stations, she said.

"We have received complaints about long lines. We do have a customer service representative working on that."

The customer service representative was on vacation and not available to be interviewed for this article.

Calls to DMV director Virginia Beecher for this article went unreturned.

Woodward said having to go to the station and wait in line two or three times to get a license is "anxiety-producing," especially for older drivers. "We sat next to a woman who was there for her fourth time," she said.

Willis, a salesman and a 40-year New Hampshire resident, said all of his previous dealings with New Hampshire officials had been positive, and he has always had a high regard for state employees. But his recent encounters with the Division of Motor Vehicles have diminished that enthusiasm a bit.

"If I ran a business like they do, I'd be out of business in a month," he said.