Paper and stickers and stamps, oh my

Let’s talk about bureaucracy and inefficiency.
In Virginia, the only thing I needed to do to drive in the HOV lanes with my Prius was, originally, the Prius itself. The car was its own evidence of hybrid technology. Eventually, the Civic hybrid came along and it was no longer possible to visually tell if a car was hybrid or not, so the rule changed. Now, you must have a “Clean Special Fuel” license plate. You can order the license plate in 5 minutes on the Virginia DMV website.
Flash to California.
In order to drive your hybrid in HOV lanes, you must have three fluorescent orange stickers, stuck right to the paintwork of the car — you can’t put them on just the bumper or on the glass, they must be stuck to the fenders. And in order to get these stickers, you have to go through a bizarre set of hoops, both bureaucratic and technological.
First, a prerequisite for getting the stickers is the establishment of a FasTrak account. This is the transponder that’s used to pay tolls on various bridges. Now, I never go across any toll bridges, and don’t plan to… but rules are rules, and I have to pay for a transponder that I will never use. And the state has to purchase the transponder that I will never use.
To get the FasTrak, you must print out a PDF, fill it in, and mail or fax it. You can’t do anything online. This in Silicon Valley, yet. (You can also go to the FasTrak office. In San Francisco.)
Downloading the PDF yields a file that can’t be opened; in the browser itself it appears blank.
Already, I’m stuck. But if I were to clear that hurdle, the next step is to wait for a FasTrak to be sent to you in the mail. After that, you must go through the same series of steps to get the stickers — this time, the PDF downloads just fine… but won’t let you print it without a password. For some reason, the California DMV tends to password protect their PDFs.
All of this nonsense requires you to collect, fill out, collate, and mail documents — twice. In the year 2006. In California.
Back in Virginia, I was able to do all my DMV-related business via their website, as far back as 1998.

[Coincidentally, I looked back in the archives with an eye towards doing an entry about the first anniversary of owning my little house, and discovered that I’d already written an entry about this DMV frustration, just about a year ago.]