Texas driver's license offices reopen with limited walk-in availability
GARLAND, Texas - Texans who need to get or renew their driver’s license may finally be able to do so after a long delay that caused a lot of frustration last week. But many are still facing problems.
Driver’s license offices across Texas were closed for a week and a half for a system upgrade.
Things were supposed to be back up and running after Labor Day weekend. However, there was an issue during the upgrade that overloaded the system.
Services were unavailable for several days and last week’s appointments were all canceled.
The doors at the DPS mega center in Garland reopened Monday morning but at least 20 people who showed up before dawn in hopes of renewing their license received bad news.
"We’ve reached our maximum at this point. As of right now, my best suggestion for you is to just go online and keep checking," a worker told the line. "Unfortunately, all of our offices are facing the same difficulty that we are today."
One woman told FOX 4 the first available appointment she was able to schedule online is in January.
"I did know about the outage, so I was like, ‘It’s gonna be worse than usual.’ And usual isn’t even ever any good," Lisa Wargofchik said. "We have so much technology and things available to us. I think this should be a much simpler process than it is. I just can’t understand what the issues are. Every other state seems to do it pretty easily."
Those who were impacted by last week’s outage received an email or were contacted by phone about the problem and told to reschedule.
Texas DPS said office hours in high-volume areas have been extended this week to accommodate the people who had to reschedule.
People without an appointment may be out of luck, though. Walk-ins are being limited because of the backlog caused by the outage.
A DPS spokesperson says the upgrade is required for Texas to be compliant with the Real ID Act, which includes new ID standards under Homeland Security.
Customers will not see any changes to the way they complete transactions as the changes occur on the backend for employees when they are processing applications.
Texas driver's license appointments canceled Wednesday, Thursday morning due to ongoing outage
The Texas Department of Public Safety canceled all appointments Wednesday because of a statewide system outage, and appointments for Thursday morning are also canceled.
The upgrade also speeds up the sharing of driver history records, so information is being shared between states, giving requesters a more complete picture of a driver’s history and improving safety.
DPS says this system upgrade is a way for a state to electronically check with all other participating states to determine if an applicant currently holds a driver license or identification card there and then take appropriate action.
DPS is urging people to look for appointments that might be a little further away from home. The facilities in more rural areas might have more availability.