DMV 2 Go Is Coming To Bath and Highland Counties
Richmond, VA – DMV 2 Go is coming to Bath and Highland Counties. The Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles is putting together a fleet of customer service centers on wheels. Rick Holcomb is the Commissioner of the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles.
“It’s our philosophy, the Governor’s philosophy, is let’s take service to the customers instead of mandating the customers come to us,” says Holcomb. “And this is a tool that we will use, and not only for serving rural areas, but we’ve used it for business development, we’ve used it to serve military installations, we’ve used it as disaster recovery. When this part of the state was hit by Hurricane Irene and we lost power in the Richmond area and in Tidewater, we were able to take the units and park them outside of an office that had no power which allowed us to continue to serve our customers.”
Bath and Highland counties both have DMV select offices, which offer limited services. Vehicle transactions, such as titling a vehicle, can be done at a select office. But you can take care of all types of DMV transactions at DMV 2 Go.
“They offer the full array of services,” says Holcomb. “Where we have a select like in Warm Springs and in Highland County, we partner with our select partners, bring the unit in and are able to complement the vehicle services that they do by doing driver services. When the mobile unit comes, you can renew your driver’s license there, you can get an ID, you can do all the driver related functions including taking a road test, taking a written test even taking a test for a commercial driver’s license.”
DMV previously had three mobile units, but due to budget cuts about ten years ago, the fleet was eliminated. Now DMV is working to build it back up. Two units are on the road now and two more should be renovated and ready to go by the spring of next year.
“In light of the budget challenges we have, we’re doing it a little differently,” says Holcomb. “When we had this fleet before, we had brand new units built to our specifications. So we’re purchasing them as used vehicles. We’re renovating them ourselves, using our staff and so we really are bringing the taxpayers a good extension of service at a very fair cost to the taxpayers.”
The DMV 2 Go mobile unit has been in Bath County once this fall and a regular schedule, for both Highland and Bath, will be established based for usage.
“I know that Mary Susan is retiring and I want to publicly thank her for the great service that she’s done for DMV as well as for Warm Springs and the county,” says Holcomb. “We’re very much looking forward to working with Pamela Webb, the new treasurer. And we’re very comfortable that the high quality of service that Mary Susan Blankenship offered will continue.”
The DMV 2 Go mobile unit will return to Bath County on Wednesday February 8 and it will be in Highland County on Tuesday February 7.