Attachment C: Survey Welcome Letter

Dear______________________.

On behalf of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), attached is the Skills Testing Delays survey. During the 2016 CDL Coordinator’s meeting and during subsequent CDL Roundtables, you were informed that the FMCSA would be conducting this survey in all states. Section 5506 of the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act of 2015, requires the FMCSA to produce a study on CDL skills test delays on an annual basis. The requirements of the study are to submit a report describing:

“(A) the average wait time from the date an applicant requests to take a skills test to the date the applicant has the opportunity to complete such test;

(B) the average wait time from the date an applicant, upon failure of a skills test, requests a retest to the date the applicant has the opportunity to complete such retest;

(C) the actual number of qualified commercial driver’s license examiners available to test applicants; and

(D) the number of testing sites available through the State department of motor vehicles and whether this number has increased or decreased from the previous year.”

Additionally, FMCSA is required to describe “specific steps the Administrator is taking to address skills testing delays in States that have average skills test or retest wait times of more than 7 days.”

The results of this survey will be used to produce a report to Congress on commercial driver’s license (CDL) skills test delays across the country and is vital to understanding the delays applicants face in prior to obtaining their CDL. Your response will allow FMCSA to produce a report covering all 50 States, as well as D.C., to provide as much data as possible to Congress. The FAST Act requires the FMCSA to conduct this survey on an annual basis.

FMCSA appreciates you taking the time to provide this feedback, so that the FAST Act requirements can be fulfilled.

When completing this survey, we ask that you keep the following item in mind:

• The focus of this survey is the time it takes an applicant to schedule a CDL skills test. In other words, if an applicant was eligible to take the CDL skills test and tried to schedule an appointment today, what would be the earliest available date?

If your State does not currently track CDL skills test delays, here are some options for calculating the delay, which may assist you in developing an estimate to complete the survey.

1. Find out the next available CDL skills test at all, or multiple, testing sites around your State. The delay would be the time between the date you gather this information and the first date a test is available.
   
   Example: If you call three test sites on January 10th to ask when their next available CDL skills test appointment is, and you receive the following answers: January 12, January 27, and January 16, you would calculate the delay as follows:
   
   Test Site 1 – next available date is January 12 = 2 day delay
   Test Site 2 – next available date is January 27 = 17 day delay
   Test Site 3 – next available date is January 16 = 6 day delay
   
   Average delay = (2+17+6)/3 = 8.3 days
   
   Note: The more test sites you use in calculations, the more accurate the average will be
   
   
   

2. If it is not possible to gather data from multiple test sites, use the delay from your States busiest test site, as this will provide an estimate of the maximum delay an applicant would face.

3. If your State tracks the date a driver receives their commercial learner’s permit (CLP) and the date a driver receives their CDL, you may use the time between these two days, minus the mandatory waiting period, to estimate the waiting time for each applicant. The average of this would be the estimated average skills test delay for your State.
   
   Example: If 5 persons received their CDL the past year, and your State has a mandatory waiting period of 14 days from the date a driver receives their CLP, you could calculate the average delay by using a table similar to the one displayed here.

	Date Driver Received CLP	Date Driver Received CDL	Days Between CLP and CDL (Subtract CLP date from CDL date)	Delay Experienced by Driver (subtract 14 day mandatory waiting period from previous column)
Driver 1	1/1/2016	3/1/2016	60 days	46 days
Driver 2	2/4/2016	3/4/2016	30 days	16 days
Driver 3	3/10/2016	3/26/2016	16 days	2 days
Driver 4	2/24/2016	3/16/2016	21 days	7 days
Driver 5	5/7/2016	5/30/2016	23 days	9 days
-	-	-	Average Delay	16 days

Note: This method is least preferred, because it does not account for drivers who may have failed the skills test multiple time, and it does not account for driver preference of when they take the test (e.g., they won’t have a vehicle available until a certain date).

If your State does not currently track CDL skills test delay times, FMCSA encourages your State to begin tracking this metric, since this survey will be conducted annually, and it will minimize the burden of your response if this information is readily available. Please respond to this survey within 30 days of receipt of this letter.

Should you have any questions, concerns, or comments regarding the survey, please do not hesitate to contact Nicole Michel, FMCSA’s Project Manager, at [email protected] or 202-366-4354. Thank you again for your time and participation in this research study.

Respectfully,

Nicole McDavid

Chief, Commercial Driver’s License Division