What Does It Take to Get a Next Day Appointment at DPS?
A computer and about two minutes of your time with this new website
When Preston Hollow mom Lisa Hardy debuted her TX FastPass website for scheduling appointments at the Texas Department of Public Safety, people at first thought it might be a scam.
After all, it can take a month or more to schedule an in-person driver’s license appointment at a Dallas area DPS office. Families have been known to take road trips to Granbury or Paris to find a not-too-distant date for a teen to get a learner’s permit.
But with Hardy’s website, which was developed by her husband Sean and his business partner Mike McCane, users can find a next-day appointment in North Texas within minutes. TX FastPass charges a flat $19.99 fee. Once scheduled, an appointment can be canceled and rescheduled for free as many times as a user would like.
Hardy, who has a degree in marketing from Texas Tech University and a passion for helping people, said she knows that scheduling with DPS can be “kind of daunting and overwhelming.” Her message to worried users: “Don’t stress, we’ve got this.”
The creation of TX FastPass stemmed from the Hardys’ own DPS scheduling crisis. Their 15-year-old daughter, Shelby, had broken down in tears because they had to cancel the teen’s learner’s permit appointment.
First, Hardy tried calling DPS, but no one picked up. Next, she drove to the Carrollton Mega Center Driver License Office. Staff told her that the office didn’t take walk-ins, and appointments could only be made online. But she might get lucky and snag a same-day appointment or cancellation if she visited the website at just the right time.
“The things we do for our kids,” Hardy said. “I sat there, and I refreshed, and refreshed, and refreshed, for a few hours on and off.”
Hardy was still refreshing when Sean, a software developer, overheard her frustration. That weekend, he got to work on a program that would check the department’s website and automatically book an appointment when one became available.
The following Monday, Shelby went to DPS and got her learner’s permit. Hardy shared the website with Shelby’s friends at Ursuline Academy and her son Jack’s friends at Jesuit Dallas. It took a month or two before the program became so popular that she realized she could turn the website into a business, and several months of additional work to make that happen.
Since TX FastPass became available to the public in March, it has helped more than 400 people make appointments with DPS. Hardy encourages people to call her if they need extra help. “I’m a hand holder from start to finish,” she said.
Park Cities mom Nicole Brewer recently used TX FastPass to get a learner’s permit appointment for her daughter, who turned 15 in the spring. When Brewer visited the DPS webpage in early June, the first Dallas area appointment she could get was in October. But then she hopped on the TX FastPass website.
“We got an appointment for the very next day,” she said. “It was great.”
The TX FastPass system is one that Hardy hopes will improve efficiency at DPS, where she said more than a quarter of appointments are no-shows.
“It can be stressful, and it can be overwhelming, navigating the DPS,” she said. “I just love to help people, and guide them, and encourage them.”
