- Appointments can be weeks or months for ID, which you may need now.
- You need government-issued ID to get a job, rent an apartment, open a bank account, board a plane, vote, and more.
- Read on for tips on getting or renewing your ID
Yaisel Castillo couldn’t afford to leave empty-handed. So she arrived at the South Austin driver’s license office at 3:30 a.m. Friday, clutching a blanket and an envelope of documents, waiting for the doors to open at 8.
“Today is my deadline,” said Castillo, 19, who just got a job but didn’t have the government-issued ID that his employer requires. “I had to miss work today to get my ID. I couldn’t risk missing it.”
By dawn, the queue had grown to dozens of people with tired eyes, desperately trying to get documents and unable to wait for months – yes, months — to an appointment at the Texas Department of Public Safety office on William Cannon Drive.
Their last hope was to snatch one of the few same-day meetings offered on weekdays on a first-come, first-served basis. Even if it meant losing a day’s pay or showing up exhausted for the next shift.
“This is crazy,” said Delphi Gutierrez, 47, who works as a cleaner and had to personally renew her license after becoming a naturalized citizen. Gutierrez didn’t arrive early enough on Monday to make an appointment the same day, so she returned on Friday at 4:30 am.
“It’s sad to have to wait so long,” she told me.
The DPS online appointment system, launched in May 2020, “means customers no longer have to wait in line for services,” spokeswoman Erica Miller told me via email.
In theory.
In fact, it could be months before you meet the ID you might need now. The South Austin office had two months of waiting for an appointment to renew or renew a license, and four months of waiting for an appointment to get a new ID.
Meetings at the North Austin office were available about twice as fast. Wait times vary from weeks to months at other DPS offices across the state.
People who need their ID early – for a variety of practical and pressing reasons – line up during the dark hours of the morning, hoping that on that day they can get the government card they can’t work without.
Prosperity starts with ID
In his inaugural address last week, Gov. Greg Abbott called Texas “America’s undisputed economic leader, providing a path to prosperity for all Texans.”
But embarking on this path – getting a job, renting an apartment, opening a bank account, getting on a plane, voting – is impossible without a state-issued identity card.
And it’s absurd to scream about Texas’s $33 billion surplus and promise historic tax cuts because abbot haswhen some Texans face such difficulty in obtaining this mandatory document. The people who usually line up at 4 or 5 am tell you that this system doesn’t work.
These long waits have become our new normal after DPS offices closed in the early months of the pandemic and then reopened in late May 2020 with over a million Texans not renewing their licenses and countless others needing services for the first time.
DPS has tried to close the backlog by offering Saturday hours in 2020 and extended workdays through August 2021, Miller said.
But the demand is not abating. Legions of people keep moving to Texas. And Miller acknowledged that “current resources are not enough” for DPS to serve all customers and keep up with population growth.
DPS is trying to reduce the need for face-to-face meetings by offering more services online. But the agency has also asked the Legislature for additional funding, additional offices and staff.
The risk of being left without
Young people waiting to receive their first ID, which must be done in person, are particularly burdened by long waiting times for appointments and problems navigating the system. They are stuck, unable to work, rent a house or drive a car legally.
Lauren Rose asked a group of young people who are from foster families or trying to get out of homelessness: given everything that happens in your life, what is the most important thing the government can do to help you?
“Their answer is, literally, getting a license is faster and easier,” said Rose, director of public policy for the Texas Network of Youth Services.
Delays and difficulties mean some young people are driving without a license for a while. They take on the risk of large fines. Other drivers risk colliding with an uninsured motorist.
“It makes people break the law,” Rose said. “There is no insurance. It is likely that the machine will not be properly registered. So at some point it will probably really bite them.”
Drivers who have a license can also face the same problem if they do not renew them on time.
Alex Kass, 35, stood in line early Friday at the South Austin DPS office seeking to renew his license after discovering it had expired about a year ago. He didn’t stop driving. He still needs to get to his health care job.
“It’s Russian roulette every day, how far I want to go,” Cass told me.
Need a middle ground
The Texas ID system works when people’s lives go according to plan—when people see their renewal notices, or qualify for online services, or prudently schedule an appointment months in advance. But people get into a fight when things go wrong.
Christina Kennedy tried to do the right thing. A few months ago, she went online to make an appointment to renew her license in San Marcos because she had heard that there was less waiting time. Unfortunately, she forgot one of the required documents while driving for half an hour to a meeting on Thursday.
Back to square one, her license expires in a week.
“It’s really frustrating,” Kennedy, 52, said when I met her outside the South Austin DPS office on Friday morning as she was lining up for her second try. “There has to be some middle ground between making an appointment months in advance and standing in that line.”
She was late for the meeting that same day. But the DPS worker urged people to go to the online booking portal at 9 a.m. and look for newly posted appointments after last-minute cancellations.
Kennedy caught one of them, returned Friday afternoon and – success! — left with an extended license.
It only took two days, three visits and luck.
Grumet is a columnist for Statesman’s Metro magazine. Her ATX in Context column contains her opinions. Share yours via email at [email protected] or via Twitter at @bgrumet. Find her previous work at Statesman.com/news/columns.
Tips for getting (or renewing) your ID
- Find out if your license or ID can be renewed online. Many Texans with current IDs are eligible for this simple process. Visit tinyurl.com/bdhuya7t for information.
- Make an appointment if you need personal service. DPS has an online schedule portal at public.txdpsscheduler.com.
- Think about getting on the road. The scheduling portal can show you appointments in nearby cities such as Pflugerville, Georgetown, and San Marcos. They may have openings earlier.
- Keep checking. People are constantly canceling and changing appointments, which means new dates are opening up.
- Cancel if you can’t go. About 30% of scheduled meetings in traffic police departments end in a no-show. DPS encourages people in this situation to cancel the appointment through the scheduling portal so that another person can take that time slot.
- And if nothing helps: Many DPS offices offer a limited number of same-day appointments on a first-come, first-served basis. People often get in line before 5 am. You can also check the scheduling portal around 9am every morning for new jobs created as a result of the cancellations.
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