The DMV office will move to the Barcroft Plaza shopping center, at 6345 Columbia Pike in the Falls Church section of Fairfax County, about four miles away from its current location.
The new DMV is expected to open “by late spring,” at which time the Four Mile Run location will close, said DMV spokeswoman Brandy Brubaker.
An existing state law on the books says specialty license plates issued for members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans may not include an emblem, like the Confederate battle flag. An injunction on First Amendment grounds prevented the Commonwealth from enforcing that law, but a Supreme Court ruling in June prompted Attorney General Mark Herring (D) to file a motion to vacate the previous order.
In a press release, the attorney general’s office says that Judge Jackson Kiser will next file an order that will specify whether nearly 1,700 previously-issued Confederate plates may be recalled.
The DMV asserts that the smartphone-based services, which allow drivers to make money by using their own cars like a dispatched taxicab, are illegal because they have not received the proper authorization from the DMV to operate in Virginia.
In letters to company officials, the DMV says it will “enforce existing laws by companies… and by individual drivers that lack authority to provide passenger transportation.”
Arlington County Police responded to an accident at the Department of Motor Vehicles (4150 S. Four Mile Run Drive) today, after a car crashed into a fence.
Police say the driver was at the DMV to take a driving test. Shortly after 1:00 p.m., the driver somehow jumped a curb in the parking lot and smashed into the fence.
Because the DMV’s Social Security Verification system will be unavailable tomorrow, services like applying for a first-time Virginia driver’s license will not be offered. A small number of renewals will be affected as well.
The system maintenance will affect branches across the country, including the one in Arlington at 4150 South Four Mile Run Drive. The branch will still be open from 8 a.m. to noon for other services.
The statewide licensing outage lasted “a couple of hours” and was resolved by noon, according to Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles spokeswoman Melanie Stokes.
The problem was caused by a faulty server, Stokes said. Licensing systems at some DMV offices may still be experiencing latency issues as a result.
Man Killed on Key Bridge Was Arlington Resident — Police say 23-year-old Arlington resident Aliester Elizardo Pineda-Medrano was walking his broken-down moped across the Key Bridge when he was struck and killed by an SUV Sunday night. The man who police say struck Pineda-Medrano and kept going has also been identified. [WUSA 9]
DMV Back Open After Roof Blown Off — A large section of the metal roof atop the DMV building on South Four Mile Run Drive blew off during Friday’s fierce winds. Nonetheless, the DMV opened as usual on Monday. [TBD]
High winds have blown off part of the roof of the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles building at 4150 South Four Mile Run Drive.
Firefighters report that a large section of the building’s metal roof blew off. The building has been evacuated. No injuries are reported.
“Is there any point at which that will formally and permanently be canceled?” a caller asked the governor, adding that single-occupant hybrids “clog up” the HOV lanes during rush hour.
McDonnell, who signed a one-year extension of the law in March, noted that the law was “put in place in previous administrations… to create an incentive for using fuel-efficient cars.”
The company’s drivers will watch over restricted parking spaces and wait for some unfortunate schmo to park there and walk off the owner’s property, at which point they snatch the car and drive off. They do this at the Four Mile Run branch of the Virginia DMV, at the Westmont Shopping Center on Columbia Pike, and elsewhere around Arlington. Needless to say, it has not won them many friends.
They have earned themselves a steady stream of hate on Yelp. They have been the subject of a not-safe-for-work screed by a prominent local blogger. And they’re often involved in disputes that have to be settled by police.
The protesters, many of whom were affiliated with the Laborers International Union of North America and Alexandria-based Tenants and Workers United, were noisy but peaceful. Their hour-long protest was watched closely by a dozen Arlington County police officers.
The demonstrators were protesting two recent actions that they say amounts to a “war and persecution of Virginia’s immigrants.” Last week, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell barred the Department of Motor Vehicles from accepting “employment authorization documents,” commonly used by immigrants, as proof of legal residency. Then this week, the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Agency revealed a change in policy that will put illegal immigrants charged with DUI on the fast track to deportation.
