No fast lane for driver's licenses

No fast lane for driver's licenses
Offices that survived storm are swamped
Monday, March 27, 2006
By Michelle Hunter

East Jefferson bureau

At 6:30 a.m., there were 10 people in line. An hour later, there were 53.

By the time the Louisiana Office of Motor Vehicles in Metairie opened its doors Thursday at 8 a.m., more than 100 customers were waiting to enter. At the head of the queue, a jumble of people engaged in a dust-up over one customer who sought to upgrade his position just before the doors were unlocked. "If you try to cut the line, people will get violent," said Irving Lopez, 44, shaking his head at the verbal melee. "It's not that serious." But it is tedious.

Doing business with the Office of Motor Vehicles has become even more of a waiting game in the New Orleans area since Hurricane Katrina took out four of its seven offices on the south shore of Lake Ponchartrain. Residents from Jefferson, Orleans, Plaquemines and St. Bernard parishes now have full-service offices only in Metairie and Westwego, with limited services at an Algiers office, spokeswoman Michelle Rayburn said.

The usual traffic of renewal requests and tests for first-time licenses has grown with a post-Katrina influx of drivers and vehicle owners hoping to replace lost titles and licenses and to register vehicles they bought after their old ones flooded, Rayburn said.

The combination of fewer offices and more customers has spawned superlines and more than a few bad backs from hours spent waiting in chairs, if any are available. "It's been crazy," Rayburn said. "It has not stopped since the hurricane."

Katrina flooded the offices on Lake Forest Boulevard in eastern New Orleans, Veterans Memorial Boulevard in Metairie and 240 Marlin St. in Chalmette, Rayburn said. There's no word on when they will reopen.

The office at 2150 West Bank Expressway in Harvey succumbed to mold and isn't likely to reopen before August, she said.

Still open is the Westwego office at 418 Avenue B and the East Jefferson office at 6701 Airline Drive in Metairie, after relocating from Kenner. Both are full-service locations.

At the Algiers office, 2001 Behrman Ave. near the Crescent City Connection, motorists may only renew or get duplicates of a driver's license or vehicle registration.

Rayburn said extra staff have been moved to each of the open offices, but each remains inundated. And, as the line grows, so does tension.

On one of his multiple trips, Lopez said he saw a man threaten to "whup" an elderly line-breaker who was using a walker and clearly couldn't handle the wait.

Lopez, an Illinois contractor who moved his family to Louisiana after Katrina, arrived at the Metairie office Thursday about 6 a.m. to hold a place in line for his parents, both in their 80s. He traded spots

with them just before the office opened.

Rayburn said the department is working on moving trailers to its Harvey location to ease the strain on other bureaus in the New Orleans area. And a second, temporary office was opened in Hammond at 219 E. Robert St. for evacuees who have moved to that area.

"We know it's aggravating, but we're doing what we can to get the offices open," Rayburn said.

In the meantime, she suggests that residents with business at the Office of Motor Vehicles get an early start, much like Earl Young, who got in line Thursday at 6:30 a.m. After a 1 ½-hour wait for the doors to open, he spent only 10 minutes getting duplicates for titles he lost in the flood. Young, 72, didn't seem to mind. "I think you're supposed to understand something like this," Young said of the post-Katrina inconvenience. "You just have to be patient."

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Michelle Hunter may be reached at mhunter@timespicayune.com or (504) 883-7054.