As a side note, not sure where in CA you live, but I had to renew my license last month (it expired) so I went and got a realID. I waited two minutes in line without an appointment and was completely done after 25 minutes. The whole process was efficient and I never came within six feet of another human.
I did all my paperwork online which gave me the cut in line pass, and I went to a special "License only" DMV. There is one in San Jose, and probably others throughout the state.
San Jose? I'll drive down and try this. I'm in San Francisco. Last time I went to the downtown one, saw a line around the block, went to Daly City, saw the same, and gave up. I tried scheduling appointment and they were booked out for something insane like 6 months lol.
So I just renewed my Texas ID online in 5 minutes, slapped my California address on it, and called it a day. The other day I got pulled over and the cop wasn't too happy about it though, said I had to carry my CA id to demonstrate that I'm allowed to drive in California. Silly but whatever.
> They even have graphs with historical wait times so you can time it for a low point.
I no longer trust those measurements.
Needing to visit the DMV for whatever paperwork (maybe in-person license renewal), I checked the DMV website. One of the local offices had a very short wait time compared to all of the others (maybe 5 minutes versus 1hr+). I went to the office with the short wait time displayed on the website only to find out they had a ridiculously long line outside the office to get the ticket, which starts the timer. They were gaming the per-customer timer by metering the rate at which customers outside the building could enter the building to get the ticket.
I thought it was both terrible and creative at the same time. Decent example of Goodhart's Law[1].
I don't trust the estimates online either, but I do trust the relative data within each DMV. So I think the graphs that tell you number of people per hour are relatively correct and can be used to predict how busy a DMV will be.
Texas lets you put a California address on IDs? Didn't even know that was possible. I thought states only allowed IDs with addresses in the same state? Do they not validate their forms? I know they are suppose to match where you domicile, so a California address on a Texas ID does sound like a red flag.
Interesting, looked it up and found a thing saying that military personnel and their spouse or dependents are allowed to have an address outside of Texas on their Texas licenses and IDs. So I guess I learned something new haha.
You're now able to upload your documents online and you'll be able to print out an Express Entry document that lets you skip the line. I went to Daly City last week and I was in and out in about 20 minutes.
I did all my paperwork online which gave me the cut in line pass, and I went to a special "License only" DMV. There is one in San Jose, and probably others throughout the state.