This past
summer of 2013, I worked as a customer service representative at the Salt Lake
City DMV. As a former employee, I am a
witness to an environmental issue the state of Utah has created there that can
be categorized as a ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ scenario, one in which an
individual’s use of a shared resource is rational, but widespread use creates
resource depletion and in some cases negative or hazardous side effects for all
users.
The most
common transaction processed at the DMV is the renewal of car or other motor
vehicle registrations. Now, all customers have the option of renewing their
vehicles online or by mail, as long as the process is complete by or shortly
after their previous expiration date. Unfortunately, there is a large portion
of Salt Lake’s population that either are computer illiterate (such as the
elderly) and incapable of renewing online, or who for whatever reason do not
receive notifications in the mail to remind them of their approaching
expiration date. There are also many other customers who do not know about the
online/mail renewal system or who come to the DMV to renew out of habit from
years of doing it that way!
To keep
lines in its lobby shorter, and to accommodate the thousands of customers who
come to the office for registration renewals only, the DMV is equipped with three
drive-through lanes on the side of the building, much like a bank. The three
lanes are manned by two workers during busy times of the day or week. If
required, customers place their safety and emissions inspection certificates along
with their registration fees into a capsule that is vacuumed through a tube
into the DMV to one of the workers, who then scans certificates into the
computer, collects the money, and returns a sticker for their license plate
indicating their registration has been paid. If there are no hiccups, the whole
drive-through experience from the time the driver pulls up to the window to when
they pull away is about two minutes maximum. However, there are many factors
that increase that wait time, such as workers having to get change from a
manager or switch stations with a coworker, workers calling the support center
for a date change on the registration, and just a general back up as there are
three lanes and only one or two workers handling them.
The
environmental issue at stake here is pollution from these cars in the
drive-through lines. During the busiest
parts of each day, and certain popular days of the week and times of the year,
there can be up to 25+ cars waiting in line! That is twenty five cars at any
one time during a busy hour who are running idle, burning fuel and putting
emissions into the air (no matter how well they passed their state-required
emission inspection test!) and getting zero miles to the gallon. It is
completely wasteful of a natural resource!
This is an example of ‘Tragedy of
the Commons’ because for the single customer at the DMV, going through the
drive-up line to get your renewal processed is a very efficient use of its
resources. With few people using those drive-up lines, renewal customers can be
in and out in under five minutes, as opposed to coming inside the building,
taking a number, and waiting for everyone else with much longer transactions
(such as title transfers, handicapped placards, and impounds) and overall
making the DMV lines inside much longer. However, the ‘tragedy’ that in
actuality does occur on a regular basis is there are many renewal customers who
head to drive-up, which then doesn’t save anyone time and creates unnecessary
pollution! Let’s put it this way, if one gets in the drive-up line and there
are five cars ahead of them in each of the three lines, that’s fifteen people
in front of you. At two minutes a customer, that’s about 15 minutes of idling
time (if there is two workers at the lines; it would be 30 minutes if there
were one) for several cars during each afternoon. According to California’s Energy Commission, “for
every two minutes a car is idling, it uses about the same amount of fuel it
takes to go about one mile.” All that wasted burned fuel creates an air
pollution contribution in the heart of a valley that already struggles with
smog.
If I were the ruler of the
universe, I would do a number of things to solve this problem, depending on my
power. I would first try and make everything electronic—somehow make it visible
on the license plate (make it glow, perhaps?) if someone’s registration were
expired so they would be caught. On a more realistic plane, I would try to
spread the word more about the online or mail renewal system! I would put out
commercials for it, ads in the paper and online--whatever I could! To discourage
people from coming to the DMV, I would make it cheaper to renew online (and
would advertise the fact), which is the opposite of true right now and it needs
to change. I would also penalize people who came to renew at the DMV somehow,
perhaps by charging an extra fee.
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