08/19/96 NO WAITING AT THIS DMV

NO WAITING AT THIS DMV

IF YOU GOT CLOCKED DOING 85 mph on the Mass. Pike, now you can pay for it while doing 28,800 bps on the Internet. Massachusetts has become the first state to allow motorists to pay speeding fines and other noncriminal violations via the World Wide Web.
With the ticket number and a credit card at hand, violaters surf to the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles at http://www.state.ma.us/rmv and pay for their sins. The Web site, which was developed for $50,000, also allows motorists to conduct common transactions such as renewing car registrations. More services will become Web-friendly by fall, including ordering vanity plates.
It's all part of the Bay State's continuing drive to eliminate the endless lines that snarled its offices a few years back--a cause several other states have adopted, although not yet by allowing transations via the Web. ``This will help us meet our goal, which is never to see another customer again,'' says a spokesman, half-jokingly. Through the Internet service, the state hopes eventually to cut back on some of its $46 million annual DMV budget.
Cybernauts may feel that Massachusetts still has a thing or two to learn. Department bureaucrats eliminated the use of slashes and periods on plates two years ago, which means that drivers won't be able to get vanity tags to match their Web sites.
EDITED BY LISA SANDERS By Mark Maremont