Published: May 25, 2006 01:54 pm            

HARBESON: A site on time shortens line

BMV Web service offers choice to drivers

Back in high school, I sat in a long traffic jam on the Watterson Expressway, waiting to go see the newest movie craze. My friend and I crawled along wondering if we’d get the tickets. Finally we made it to the show. Wow, we thought, this is definitely worth the wait. It was John Travolta after all.

Another time, I waited for hours with a friend after a concert held at a local club in New Albany. We hoped to meet the entertainer before he left in his limousine. Finally he came out and we scored an autograph. And I suppose just to reward us for staying so long, we even got a kiss!

Wow, we thought, this is definitely worth the wait! It was Elvis after all.

OK it was an Elvis impersonator, but still it was exciting for two teenage girls.

Come on, you know you’ve done it too. It all depends on perceived value. You’ve waited, and will continue to wait, ridiculously long times for things you deem worthy.

But no one wants to wait a long time in the Bureau of Motor Vehicles Office. It’s just hard to get excited about waiting to pay sales, excise and wheel taxes.

So it’s a great idea that Indiana is now tracking average wait times in the state’s BMV offices and publishing them on their Web site. The site lists the top 20 slowest sites for the month, which currently includes Jeffersonville (16th) and Sellersburg (20th).

For these 20 offices, the Web site offers directions to three nearby locations that have lower average times, giving taxpayers the opportunity to avoid long waits. Clicking on each of the three sites listed takes you straight to a Google map where you can calculate drive times. I am 3 minutes away from the Sellersburg location (which has an average time of 45 minutes), and the site lists New Albany, Madison and Scottsburg with lower average wait times.

If I go to New Albany, with an average time of 33 minutes, it will take me 10 minutes to drive there, for a grand total of 43 minutes. So I can theoretically save 5 minutes of time by driving to New Albany. But it took more than 5 minutes to use the Internet to figure all this out, so I won’t really be ahead. I need a better value.

So I checked on the other branches listed above and I would be losing time, not saving it, because of increased drive time. I realized it made no sense to change and I resigned myself to sitting in uncomfortable chairs in the BMV office with one song constantly beating in my head: Bob Seger’s “I Feel Like a Number.”

But then it hit me. Suddenly I realized the genius of Commissioner Joel Silverman. He enabled me to find the location with the lowest wait time in the entire state so I could travel to any site, even to a whole other part of the state, and still be ahead. How? It’s simple really: any amount of time traveling in the car beats time sitting in the BMV.

Heck, I could travel up north while listening to every single song Seger ever sang.

I figure this might be the only way to feel any control. After all, it’s not like I can go to a totally different company because this is a government operation.

With this new plan, I might actually arrive at my BMV destination relaxed and happy. I’m sure Mr. Silverman and other government officials realize that’s time well spent because a relaxed taxpayer is a compliant taxpayer.

Send comments to Sellersburg resident Debbie Harbeson at Daharbeson@yahoo.com. Current average wait time for a response is 453.5 minutes, lower than Stawar, Cummins, McDonald and Dodd. Well, combined anyway.

        

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