7-digit license plates: Department of Licensing changes the plan

They’re still going to move to 7-digit license plates, as reported here and elsewhere recently, but the configuration will be a little simpler – read on for today’s announcement:

The Department of Licensing (DOL) has modified the plan
announced last month for issuing seven-character license plates for use
on passenger cars and sport-utility vehicles.

DOL will begin issuing a new, seven-character configuration in November
or early December as announced, but the arrangement of letters and
numbers on the plates has changed.

After consulting with the agency’s law enforcement partners, the
decision was made to adopt a configuration many feel will be easier to
remember. The new plates will have three letters followed by four
numbers (AAA1111).

The plate configuration plan being abandoned consisted of a number, a
letter, two more numbers and then three letters (1A11AAA).

After announcing the new configuration on October 7, the agency was
contacted by a number of people asking for a reconsideration of the
arrangement of numbers and letters. The majority of those who contacted
DOL were not opposed to having seven characters, but felt the
configuration selected would be difficult to remember.

“We carefully considered all of the comments we received and decided,
with the help of our law enforcement partners, to change the plan,” DOL
Director Liz Luce said.

This change will not delay DOL’s ability to issue the new plates on
time. None of the new plates with the abandoned configuration were
produced, so the change won’t result in any additional costs or waste of
materials.

The new configuration will yield about 138 million possible
combinations.

Neighborhood vehicle licensing offices around the state will begin
issuing the new seven-character plates after exhausting their stock of
the current six-character plates. This means the new plates will be
available at different times in different locations around the state.

As previously announced, the overall appearance of the passenger vehicle
plates will not change. They will still feature the standard mountain
background currently in use.

mar3c November 3, 2009 (6:07 am)

does anyone know if any part of the letter designations refer to anything, or are they random?
.
for example, in my home state, the configuration was 11A1111. the first two digits refer to the county where the vehicle is registered, so that a trooper can immediately tell what part of the state it’s from.
.
i have noticed a lot of UHB and UHC in west seattle. just one of those things that makes me wonder about such things.

miws November 3, 2009 (8:32 am)

mar3c, I think they’re pretty much random now, and have been for years, if not actually going back to the last major change, nearly 23 years ago.

That change, when the “Mountain” plates were first issued, replacing the green(?) on a off-whitish background, also reversed the the 3 letter/3 number combo. Pre-Mountain passenger plates were formatted AAA 123, and for the last couple of years or so, of that format, a hyphen was added in between the letters and numbers. That was when the state decided that a maximum of 7 characters could be used, instead of 6.

Back with those older plates, they were indeed “assigned” to certain counties, and split between Western and Eastern Washingon. “A” through around “K” were this side of the state. In fact “K” (“KA”-“KL” or whatever) was split between Kitsap County, and another, which would have been assigned “KM”-“KZ”. That may have actually been where the western/eatsern split occurred. I almost want to say that the last half of “K” was assigned to Kittitas County, just over Snoqualmie Pass. As memory serves, “A” was King County, “B” was Pierce, and “D” was Snohomish.

There were also calendars, back in the ’60’s, in barber shops (likely distributed by barber shop suppliers), that listed which plates were assigned to which Counties. I don’t recall seeing similar calendars in other types of businesses, although I would think Auto Parts stores may have had them.

IIRC, in the last few years of the old style/format plates, King County, at least, had pretty much exhausted their assigned allotment of plates, and the state started issuing whatever was available, that the other counties had used up.

Mike

miws November 3, 2009 (8:43 am)

Here‘s a site I found, with a history of Washington plates from 1916-1994.

Mike

Jose November 3, 2009 (10:13 am)

Thanks, Mike!

Richard November 3, 2009 (7:25 pm)

As a native, I certainly remember the county specific plates, though the details of only one besides confirming King Co. as A__. San Juan County was SJN or at least SJ_

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