DMV Mobile Office Rolling into Falls Church Friday

After months of scouring through dates for its arrival, the DMV 2 Go bus is rolling into Falls Church Friday.

Tom Clinton, commissioner of revenue for the City of Falls Church, said he has been in discussions with the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles to bring the roving office to town for a day. The bus can handle all DMV transactions except customers looking to receive their Commercial Drivers’ License.

“I’m excited about it,” said Clinton whose office oversees the city’s DMV Select office in City Hall. “It’s a converted custom bus that has all of the modern DMV stuff needed for transactions.”

Between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., the bus will park outside to serve customers with everything from a changing license from another state to signing up for a state issued identification card. Sunni Brown, a DMV spokeswoman, said the DMV 2 Go program started in January 2011 with one bus and recently expanded to a fleet of five. Brown said the buses have served more than 20,000 customers since the program’s beginning. The buses are designated to various areas in the state, including one in Northern Virginia.

Finding a place to park the bus was a problem for Clinton. Parking the bus outside City Hall would take away several parking spaces and the city’s DMV Select office is located there. Clinton said Falls Church City Public Schools employee Marybeth Connelly recommended the parking lot at the high school because of its size and classes won’t be in session yet.

Clinton said the one-day event, like the DMV Select office at City Hall, is not just for City of Falls Church residents, but Northern Virginia overall.

“I know how much people hate going to the DMV in Tysons,” Clinton said.

Brown said the mobile program started in the state’s more rural areas to bring services to customers who didn’t live near close to DMV centers. Over time, DMV officials noticed that people in Northern Virginia needed the program as well.

“What we found is that with traffic, people in Northern Virginia were having trouble going to their local DMV on their lunch break and getting back to work in time,” Brown said.

With about 25,000 transactions made last year at the city’s DMV Select, Clinton said he hopes the bus can divert some of that traffic Friday. He said he and DMV officials have already started discussing possibly bringing the bus back in the future.

“I’m looking forward to see how it goes Friday,” Clinton said.

For more information about the DMV 2 Go program, go to www.dmvNOW.com/DMV2Go.