TSA Expands TWIC Driver Identification Program; Security Plan Will Encompass 147 U.S. Ports

By Sean M. McNally, Senior Reporter

This story appears in the Feb. 25 print edition of Transport Topics.

Two years after it was first announced, the federal government has begun a full rollout of its plan to provide high-tech, secure identification for workers in and around America’s ports.

However, some in the trucking industry have expressed frustration with the pace and manner in which implementation of the program, called the Transportation Worker Identification Credential, has proceeded.

The Transportation Security Administration began its full rollout of TWIC, which Congress first called for in 2002, in Wilmington, Del., in October.

“Overall, the program is progressing pretty smoothly,” Maurine Fanguy, TSA’s program director for TWIC, told Transport Topics Jan. 24.

At that time, the agency had begun enrolling port workers in the TWIC program at 54 of the 147 ports where it intends to establish the credentialing program.

“We’ve stood up those 54 sites in 100 days,” she said. “In terms of that first 100 days, we have enrolled close to 60,000 people.”

By the end of February, according to the agency’s schedule, TSA will establish enrollment centers in an additional 29 ports.

 Since Oct. 16, when the first enrollment site opened in Wilmington, Del., TSA has “really ratcheted up our enrollment,” Fanguy said, and is “going gangbusters to expand our footprint to those 147 sites.”

Nearly 1 million TWIC cards — secure, biometrically encoded identification cards — will be issued, Fanguy said, to truck drivers, merchant mariners, longshoremen and other port workers.

The cards, as envisioned by the 2002 legislation, would be compatible with a reader that would read biometric information imprinted on the card to verify the identity of the cardholder.

However, the implementation of the reader technology has proven difficult for TSA. Fanguy said that, in response to industry concerns during the rulemaking process, TSA decided “to actually break out the enrollment from the card readers” and issue a separate federal rule on the specifications and requirements for the readers.

After that decision was made, Fanguy said new legislation called for a pilot test of the readers, a test TSA was beginning to undertake.

TSA met with representatives of the technology industry in November to look at reader technology, Fanguy said, and the agency soon will begin a pilot program at a number of ports, including the ports of New York and New Jersey, Los Angeles and Long Beach, and Brownsville, Texas.

The lack of a reader for the cards is one of the biggest frustrations for trucking industry officials, who said that without the reader, the card is just another expense.

“TWIC is not a bad concept,” said Bill Molner, chairman of the Maryland Motor Truck Association’s tank truck council, “but I think everybody’s a little burned by the fact they don’t have the means to use the card the way it was supposed to be used.
 
“Right now, it looks like another money grab by the government,” Molner said.

“In my opinion, it’s somewhat like they are putting the cart before the horse,” said Paul Kelly, chairman of MMTA’s intermodal council.

“If they don’t have an electronic reader, the system’s not going to work,” he said. “They should have had the whole program together.”

When TSA published its final rule to implement TWIC in 2007, it said it “would not be prudent” to pursue the reader requirement at the same time as the requirement for the cards.

The cost to the maritime industry to purchase the readers was one of the factors in delaying their introduction, Fanguy said.

She also said that TSA “wanted to make sure we had the right technology standard” before putting the readers out in the field, and the agency had put together a working group to develop that standard and the final specifications. Those specifications were published in September.

The lack of readers for the cards at ports is causing some truckers to hold off on obtaining the expensive credential, one industry official said.
 
“Right now, I think the numbers overall are below . . . what they expected to get for enrollment, and one of the problems that we’re seeing is that we don’t know when enforcement is going to come into play,” said Martin Rojas, executive director of safety, security and operations for American Trucking Associations. “Once you start the enforcement . . . then you’re going to see a surge of people coming in to apply and enroll for the TWIC card.”

However, it could be some time before the readers are fully in place, Fanguy told TT. She said TSA would like to do “the pilot over a number of years to make sure we get the right amount of data.”

Even without readers, the federal government could begin requiring the card to gain access to sensitive areas of ports “later this year,” Fanguy said.

“The enforcement piece is the Coast Guard’s responsibility, but in terms of enforcement, we will give at least a minimum of 90 days’ notice,” she said.

Without readers, however, Kelly said the TWIC becomes a burden on truck traffic in and out of ports. Especially if the government were to go with an interim step of having security guards manually check the cards, “it’s going to have the ports backed up.”

Another issue cited by industry officials was the fact TWIC does not replace or supersede other credentials, meaning drivers are still subject to other background checks and other credentialing protocols.

“That TWIC card will not get you into the pier alone,” said Kelly, noting that drivers may need additional local or state credentials if they do work in other ports.
 
For example, he said, a driver working in the Ports of Virginia —Norfolk, Newport News, Hampton Roads and Portsmouth — and the Port of Baltimore and who also does work in New Jersey would need at least three additional credentials besides the TWIC card.
 
“What the TWIC is, is only a tool that verifies that a person complies with all the requirements of the legislation,” Rojas said. “It’s an access card, but access is granted by the facility.”

Fanguy said TSA was working with states and port authorities to reduce that burden and “to try to do things to make it easier on drivers.”

But, she said, “TWIC does not preempt states from issuing their own credentials.” Some states, she added, have chosen to accept the TWIC, and “we applaud them for that.”

Richard Scher, spokesman for the Maryland Ports Administration, said a driver working in the Port of Baltimore currently needs several credentials besides the TWIC but that the federal identification ultimately will replace some of those credentials.

“The MPA, which oversees the public marine terminals at the Port of Baltimore, has its own security identification,” he said. “This ID card currently grants access to public terminals only but will ultimately be replaced by TWIC for access. The private terminals at the Port of Baltimore have their own security access systems, which will have to incorporate TWIC for access.”

The cost of the TWIC also has been a consistent issue for the trucking industry. Rojas said the background check associated with TWIC can be duplicative and burdensome on drivers who already have undergone similar assessments to haul hazardous materials, or for other secure credentials.

“We would like to see the TWIC as the central ID; that would provide multiple functionality . . . and satisfy everything,” he said.

TSA does discount the price of a TWIC for drivers who have received a threat assessment to haul hazmat to $105.25 from the normal $132.50.

Kelly also raised the issue of the time — a couple of weeks in most cases, he said — for a driver to get a TWIC. Given the scarcity of drivers in the trucking industry, “no man is going to sit around to wait to get a TWIC card,” he said. 

“What they’ll do is go get another job where they don’t need one,” he said. “It’s a tremendous competitive disadvantage [that’s] going to be a problem for all of the maritime trucking industry.”

Fanguy said there was an “interim provision” of the rule that would allow some people to get “accompanied access” to secure areas, but they would need to be a “direct hire” of a company.

“That may cover some truckers, and it may not cover others,” she said.