DMV Changes Coming to Northern Virginia

(Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story noted that the new Ballston location would not be a full service DMV; it WILL be a full-service DMV.)

IMAGE of Four Mile Run Drive office in South Arlington courtesy of DMV

ARLINGTON, VA — To increase efficiency in Northern Virginia, the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) plans to expand service options over the next two years and add additional visits from its mobile customer service centers.

“Wait times in Northern Virginia are higher than we’d like them to be and we hope this plan will not only increase efficiency and improve service but also add convenient new options for our customers,” said DMV spokeswoman Brandy Brubaker, in an email explaining the changes.

South Arlington Office Closing; New DMV Offices Coming to Barcroft Plaza, Ballston

This spring, DMV will open full-service offices in Barcroft Plaza, located at 6345 Columbia Pike in the Falls Church area of Fairfax County and in the Ballston area, and will close its S. Four Mile Run Drive office in South Arlington.

The lease at Four Mile Run expires in the spring and the DMV searched “quite some time to find affordable new space that met our criteria and was located in an area with a high concentration of DMV customers,” Brubaker noted.

These two new offices will increase DMV’s square footage and service windows in the local area by 50 percent. The DMV will go from 12,000 square feet of office space and 18 service windows at Four Mile Run to 18,000 square feet of combined office space and 28 combined service windows at the Barcroft and Ballston offices.

The South Arlington location is expected to close April 15, when the Barcroft location opens, according to All Fairlington Bulletin.

The Ballston office, at 3434 Washington Blvd. in Arlington County, is located only a block and half from the Virginia Square-GMU metro station which will make it convenient for folks who work or live in the area or who use the metro for travel, the DMV points out. The location will be a full-service DMV and will offer road tests.

Road tests will be offered by appointment only at both of these new locations so we can schedule them during off-peak traffic times. In addition, road tests will not be conducted through residential neighborhoods.

Increasing DMV 2 Go Visits

“We will also be increasing visits from our DMV 2 Go mobile office in Northern Virginia to better serve customers in a variety of convenient locations,” Brubaker said. Customers can conduct all of the same transactions on DMV 2 Go that they can in the DMV brick-and-mortar offices.

Adding Fort Belvoir Location

Additionally, DMV is working with the Army Corps of Engineers and officials at Fort Belvoir to establish a location on post. This location would serve the growing number of customers who work and visit Fort Belvoir. “We hope to open this new location in the second quarter of 2016,” Brubaker said.

Fair Oaks Mall DMV Moving

Also, the DMV plans to relocate its Fair Oaks Mall location to the former site of the Northern Virginia Training Center, on Braddock Road, in May 2017. “While we have not finalized the number of customer service windows, the new facility will be nearly twice the size of our current Fair Oaks Mall office,” Brubaker said. “The new location will allow us to give road tests, something that isn’t possible at the current Fair Oaks office.”

Online Services

“We’d also encourage customers to use our website, dmvNOW.com, whenever possible,” Brubaker said. “We have more than 40 transactions available online and many customers only need to visit an actual brick-and-mortar office once every 16 years to get a new driver’s license photo.”

A recent study found that about 20 percent of DMV customers visit DMV in person when they could have conducted their transaction online. “We are going to continue our push to educate customers about online services over the next year,” Brubaker said.