Traffic Enforcement Agent:
exam timing and pacing

Seconds per question, section by section

100 questions over 125 minutes averages out at about 75 seconds each, and that average describes almost none of this exam. Comfortable in one section, brutal in the next. Knowing which is which before you sit down is most of what pacing practice buys you.

Where it squeezes

Number Facility is the tightest section here, at about 50 seconds a question. Inductive Reasoning is the loosest at roughly 84. Number Facility again runs at about fifty seconds. Everything else on this exam gives you at least seventy.

Where candidates lose time is number facility, and it is rarely because they read slowly. It is because they will not settle on an answer. Nothing is deducted for a wrong answer here, so a marked guess and a candidate who has moved on beats a perfect answer that cost two other questions.

What the City publishes, and what is ours

DCAS names 9 abilities for this title, in Notice of Examination 6310, 6330, 6331. What the notice does not give is a question count or a time limit, for this title or any other. Nobody outside the City has those two numbers, so a site quoting them is quoting a guess.

The 9 sections above are the City's. The 100 questions and the 125 minutes are ours. We picked them so the practice sitting feels like the real thing, and we would rather tell you that than let you assume the City set them.

How to practice the clock

Do one section, timed, before anything longer. A full sitting tells you your score. A single timed section tells you where the score came from, and here that means finding out what number facility feels like at 50 seconds a question.

Then sit all 125 minutes in one go, at least a week before the real one. A summons that cannot survive a hearing is worse than no summons. That is why so much of this exam is precision in writing rather than judgment under pressure.