Hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers flooded local DMV offices, including across Long Island, this past spring in the lead-up to the May 7 deadline to obtain a REAL ID-compliant driver’s license, new statewide data shows.
The DMV figures show that roughly 7.8 million New Yorkers now have a REAL ID or Enhanced ID — needed for domestic airline travel and for entering federal buildings — representing almost 50% of residents with a valid permit, license or nondriver identification. That’s up from 6.9 million New Yorkers who’d obtained the document just before the May deadline.
Federal data also shows about 12.7 million New Yorkers have a passport, which also is REAL ID-compliant for travel both domestically and internationally.
Long Island, meanwhile, tracked ahead of the rest of the state, with 53% of Nassau County residents and nearly 52% of Suffolk County residents securing a REAL ID or Enhanced ID, DMV figures show.
“Long Island is in line with or ahead of the rest of the state in REAL ID enrollment,” said DMV spokesman Tim O’Brien.
In the months leading up to the deadline, New Yorkers were flooded with advertisements, commercials and reminders to register for a REAL ID-compliant license — or risk being unable to get on a plane this past summer without a passport.
The message appears to have worked, with the number of New Yorkers applying for a REAL ID-compliant license growing from 106,603 in January to a high of 302,812 in April, DMV data shows.
Since then, the numbers have steadily declined, from 284,058 new REAL ID or Enhanced ID transactions in May to 149,254 in September, data shows.
While demand may have slowed from its peak in the spring — when Long Islanders were waiting months to secure a DMV appointment — grabbing an immediate spot to apply for a REAL ID or Enhanced ID remains no easy task.
Newsday searched for appointments at Long Island’s seven DMV locations — three in Nassau and four in Suffolk — and found only a handful of openings though the rest of October, primarily in Riverhead, with significantly more slots available in November.
“There still remains a healthy demand for appointments,” O’Brien said. “DMV continues to release Real ID appointments as needed in order to ensure appointment availability.”
Prior to the May deadline, the Transportation Security Administration warned air travelers that they could face “delays, additional screening and the possibility of not being permitted into the security checkpoint” if they did not have a REAL ID-compliant document.
But air travel advocacy groups said those delays, and the threat of large numbers of Americans not being allowed to board planes, never materialized.
“It was business as usual,” said Charles Leocha, president and co-founder of Travelers United, a nonprofit that represents air travelers. “There were more people, but the system cut wait time and TSA succeeded in about the same number of delays and cancellations.”
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the region’s major airports, referred requests for comment to the TSA, which noted that the Real ID national compliance rate at security checkpoints is more than 94%.
Obtaining a REAL ID has no additional cost. An Enhanced ID, meanwhile, costs $30 more, but allows travel to Mexico, Canada and parts of the Caribbean by land or sea, but not by air.
Robert Brodsky is a breaking news reporter who has worked at Newsday since 2011. He is a Queens College and American University alum.