“You should have been here yesterday,” said a St. John resident.
After a year-end traffic jam at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles Inspection Lane on St. John when BMV computers went down and frustrated residents were unable to re-register vehicles, things ran smoothly on the second day of business in 2014.
Vehicle owners had complained about the BMV’s inability to process vehicle registrations since early December.
BMV officials blamed the situation on computers at both the St. John and St. Thomas BMV offices.
Staff at the St. John BMV Inspection Lane had tried to circumvent the agency’s computer problem with handwritten temporary registrations before closing for the Christmas and New Year’s Day holidays and Three Kings Day, January 6.
The computers were up and running when BMV and the Inspection Lane reopened on Tuesday, January 7, and one BMV employee said things were hectic.
“The place was packed,” the BMV employee told Tradewinds. “It was jammed.”
By Wednesday afternoon, about a half-dozen residents were waiting for their paperwork to be processed by BMV’s now-working computers.
Things were going so smoothly one longtime local even forgot she had left her car parked in the inspection lane to complete her paperwork inside.
“I better go move my car,” she said to no one in particular as she rushed out the door with completed registration paperwork in hand.
