Coloradans who live in smaller communities are familiar with taking road trips to access basic services, whether that’s health care, back-to-school shopping or better-stocked grocery stores in bigger cities.

But a longstanding strain on Colorado Division of Motor Vehicles services has turned the tables, with some metro Denver residents driving hours for in-person appointments to get new driver’s licenses — or facing wait times of a month or more closer to home.

“It’s kind of a joke now, our family trip to Lamar,” Broomfield resident Leigh Wilson said. Wilson has taken several trips south for her son’s permit and license, driving about 430 miles, or seven hours round trip.

Wilson and her family have even found a favorite restaurant in the Prowers County city, Tavern 1301, where they ran into a Littleton mom and daughter also road-tripping to the Lamar DMV.

Wilson is one of several Front Range residents who told The Denver Post they’ve chosen to take road trips rather than wait a month or longer to get a new or replacement license at their “home” office.

Five years after Colorado DMV offices stopped accepting walk-ins and changed to an appointment-only system because of the coronavirus pandemic, the average wait time for an in-person appointment in metro Denver is still about six weeks, state officials told The Denver Post.

“We believe the appointment backlogs are being caused by several factors, but also we are still reviewing the ‘why’ to better address the problem,” DMV spokesperson Corinne Willer wrote in a statement to The Post.DMV officials declined to be interviewed for this story and instead answered questions by email.

Other things contributing to long wait times include inefficiencies with the appointment system, staff turnover and staff availability, Willer wrote.

More people are working at the DMV overall — 577 full-time employees as of June 30, up from 557 in 2019 — but the number of people working in driver’s license offices has remained flat, state data shows.

The division has funding for 295 full-time driver’s license employees for the upcoming year, three fewer than in 2019.

State officials say the increase in people using the DMV’s digital “convenience services,” like the app and website, factor into staffing levels.

Greeley resident Nicole Kallsen was looking for appointments for her 17-year-old son to get his license weeks in advance, and eventually ended up driving an hour east to Fort Morgan.

“I know people there are working really hard, so I don’t understand why the system continues to be so slow, especially when there are so many options to renew stuff online,” she said. “Why is it that the office is still so slow and far behind?”

Thornton resident Jonah Rotert, 18, said he ended up driving his girlfriend two hours east to Sterling when she couldn’t find an appointment to get her license any faster than five weeks out, despite needing it sooner so she could commute to college.

A Denver Post analysis of eight metro Denver DMV offices found that on Aug. 20, the average wait time to renew a driver’s license in person was 24 days, while an appointment for a new license was an average wait of 46 days.

The longest wait time for an in-person appointment to replace a license or get one for the first time was 62 days at the northeast Denver office.

State DMV officials said average wait times in metro Denver were about six weeks, decreasing to four weeks statewide.

Hiring more employees is a long-term solution the DMV is considering, Willer said. State leaders are more focused on “immediate relief” through encouraging Coloradans to use online services, better managing the appointment system and getting people to cancel appointments when they no longer need them.

DMV data does show more people are using online services. In 2019, an average of 631 people per day got their driver’s license online in Colorado.

That number more than doubled in 2024, when an average of 1,426 people per day got their licenses online.

Meanwhile, people getting their Colorado driver’s license in person dropped 15% under the new appointment system, from an average of 3,742 per day in 2019 to 3,193 per day in 2024.

While many DMV services can be done online, such as address changes, license renewal or paying citations, for now, people needing in-person appointments seem to be stuck with waiting for weeks or months to get into their local DMV office or driving long distances.

Greeley resident Candace Emmerling, who drove 90 minutes to Akron so her daughter could get her learner’s permit, said she doesn’t understand why offices don’t go back to walk-in appointments.

“I feel like it could be fixed,” she said. “I don’t understand why you can’t just go back to doing it the way it was before.”