CARROLLTON — Sweating through his Army T-shirt, Patrick McNevins leaned against a brick wall at the driver license mega center in Carrollton and sighed.

"Once I get this driver's license, I'll be someone again," he said under the Friday afternoon sun.

McNevins, 37, spent over 20 hours in the past few weeks trying to get a new license after his expired. He took a road test at a third-party company, was turned away for having the wrong paperwork and got fired from his job as a commercial electrician for taking so many days off work, he said.

Now, all he had to do was wait — a tedious task that Texas Department of Public Safety mega centers were designed to alleviate. But six years after the centers debuted, customers report wait times of up to eight hours to complete a simple license renewal or apply for a driving permit.

Some of those hours are spent lined up outside in the 100-degree heat before they can get a seat inside the air-conditioned building, which holds around 300.

The longest waits at mega centers across the state tend to be on Mondays and Fridays, according to DPS, and the high-volume summer months don't make it any better.

What's more, the Carrollton and Garland centers are getting castoff customers from smaller DPS facilities in Denton, Plano and Rockwall, which are among six smaller offices statewide that began limiting their services as part of a summer-long initiative.

The program, designed to ease wait times and keep people out of the heat, encourages customers to visit mega centers or use the agency's online portal. According to the Department of Public Safety, more than 3.6 million people who visited DPS offices in 2017 didn't need to do so.

After the first two weeks of the program, which began July 9, the number of customers processed in those six offices decreased by 44 percent, the agency said.

Long lines form at the Texas Department of Public Safety Driver License Mega Center in Carrollton, on Friday, August 3, 2018. (Samantha Gross / DMN Staff)

Even so, the long delays remain, and there's no shortage of horror stories to share while you wait.

Customers can save a place in line by logging into an online queuing system. However, the online submission must be completed the morning of your visit, and the spots often fill up.

Cher Jacobs, 66, tried to reserve a place for three days in a row but never secured a spot. She said her eight-hour experience at the Carrollton mega center on Tuesday was nothing short of a nightmare.

"I've never seen anything like this," she said. "You dread it, and it's always a pain. But this was just insane."

The push to end long waits at DPS offices began in the 2011 legislative session, when the state made a $63 million investment for the first six mega centers and 266 employees to staff them.

When the first centers opened in 2012, employees were told the licensing process would be streamlined to a quick 30 minutes.

Seven more mega centers have been built across the state since then, and customers say the wait times could not be worse.

In 2015, a House panel approved $153.5 million for the Driver License Improvement Program, which was meant to end long waits and hire 222 new employees, The Dallas Morning News reported then.

The rider was authored by Sen. Jane Nelson, a Flower Mound Republican.

Long lines form at the Texas Department of Public Safety Driver License Mega Center in Carrollton, on Friday, August 3, 2018. (Samantha J. Gross / Staff )

Mason Trevino, a 22-year-old employee of the city of Carrollton, said he was optimistic when he arrived at 6:15 a.m. last Tuesday — nearly two hours before the center opened.

But Trevino, who was served about six hours later, said he was still the 200th person in line.

"The line wrapped around the building before it even opened," he said. "It was pretty stressful."

Hugo Espino Jr., 7, was still far from the door after waiting in the sun for about an hour. He sat in the brown grass, his eyes glued to an iPhone video game. In order to play in his Lewisville football league this fall, he needs a state-issued identification card.

"The people who are leaving now got here at 8 a.m.," his father, Hugo Espino, said at noon. He clutched his son's birth certificate and school yearbook in his hands. "I just hope we have all the right documentation."

DPS said in a statement Friday that the agency plans to discuss staffing and facility concerns with the state Legislature this session, which begins in January.

Jacobs said she hopes the state will listen, and do more to change the way the mega centers are run.

"They need more centers, period," Jacobs said. "There's not enough staffing. Some booths were empty."

She said she was also unhappy with the way customers were treated. They were told to sit, not stand, and were not allowed to eat or drink in the waiting area.

"I've never gone eight hours without eating," she said. "We got Mexican food and margaritas after to drown our sorrows. Food had never tasted so good."

Jacobs said she plans to renew her license online the next time around.

"I hope to never come back," she said. "But they leave you with no alternative."