Coronavirus Update: DMV Reopening 5 San Francisco Bay Area Field Offices
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) -- After weeks of forcing Californians to go on-line for service during the current coronavirus shelter in place, the Department Of Motor Vehicles reopened five San Francisco Bay Area locations Friday for in-person appointments.
The DMV opened 25 field offices statewide including those located in San Francisco, Oakland Claremont, Concord, Santa Rosa and San Jose. The offices will now be open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. with the exception of opening at 9 a.m. Wednesday.
"The DMV continues to encourage customers to use online services, its expanded virtual services and other service channels to complete transactions, including driver license and vehicle registration renewals," the state agency said in a release.
To safeguard the health of employees and customers, the DMV said, it temporarily closed all offices to the public March 27.
Following cleaning of the offices, expansion of virtual services and development of new protocols, the DMV believed it was time to reopen select offices based on location, size, service capacity and the ability to offer enhanced service to commercial driver license customers.
The remainder of DMV's 170 public offices will be opened in phases.
Employees will maintain physical distancing while serving customers with existing appointments and Californians in need of selected transactions that can only be completed in a DMV field office.
Those include:
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- Paying registration for a vehicle impounded because of registration-related issues
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- Reinstating a suspended or revoked driver license
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- Applying for a reduced-fee or no-fee identification card
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- Processing commercial driver license transactions
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- Applying for a disabled person parking placard (this can also be done by mail using the REG 195 form)
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- Adding an ambulance certificate or firefighter endorsement to a driver license
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- Verifying a transit training document to drive a transit bus
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- Processing DMV Express customers for REAL ID transactions, if time and space allows
