NC State Transportation Experts Inform State Auditor’s NCDMV Report
North Carolina consistently ranks as one of the very best states to do business in recent years, and boasts many highly desirable places to live. Over 900 people moved to North Carolina every day in 2023, per US census data. Ideally, those scores of new residents feel welcomed to the state by a safe, well-maintained, and functional transportation system of roads, bike lanes, sidewalks, greenways, airports, buses, trains, and ferries.
There’s another vital and often-overlooked part of North Carolina’s transportation system: the North Carolina Division of Motor Vehicles (NCDMV). One of the first and most common interactions new residents have with state government is visiting an NCDMV Driver License Office or License Plate Agency—and right now, doing so often requires hours of waiting and possibly hundreds of miles of travel to reach a less crowded location, because appointments are extremely hard to get. Not only does that make a bad impression on new residents, it represents significant costs and barriers being imposed on all North Carolinians trying to access basic, necessary services like license renewals and driving tests that let them get to school and work, access food and healthcare, and live their everyday lives.
When North Carolina’s recently elected State Auditor, Dave Boliek, launched an audit of NCDMV to identify causes and potential solutions for many of the issues the division is facing, he called on the team behind last year’s Opportunities for Modernizing and Improving NCDMV Operations report to serve as neutral, third-party subject matter experts for his team’s audit.
That 2024 report was completed by NC State University’s Institute for Transportation Research and Education (ITRE) for the state legislature, in partnership with the Bryan School of Business and Economics at UNC Greensboro. ITRE’s recent DMV projects build on the team’s extensive experience with Motor Vehicle Administration and optimization, as well as operational and economic analysis of all modes of transportation.
“We appreciate the opportunity to serve the people of North Carolina by providing timely and responsive subject matter expertise to the Office of the State Auditor. At ITRE, our mission is to make transportation more efficient, sustainable, and people-centered—and we look forward to a thriving NCDMV that works for all North Carolinians,” said Daniel Findley, ITRE Associate Director.
The Office of the State Auditor held a press conference announcing the audit report release, which includes significant contributions of data and analysis from the ITRE / UNCG team. Additionally, one of the five primary recommendations is for NCDMV to “partner with an industry expert, such as ITRE” on improving service delivery. As NCDMV continues its ongoing efforts to remedy customer experience issues, the ITRE team stands ready to help.