After spending most of his Wednesday at the city driver’s licensing office at City Square in Kapalama waiting for a state identification card, Alejandro Romero raised the document over his head in triumph and was greeted with a smattering of cheers and applause from those who had been waiting in line with him.

Wednesday was the first day that the City and County of Honolulu, along with neighbor island counties, took over issuing state ID cards from the state Attorney General’s Office, which had dispensed them from the state ID office at 465 S. King St. for years. That office was shuttered on Dec. 21, leaving those seeking a state ID nowhere to go for more than a week.

Dennis Kamimura, longtime chief of the Division of Motor Vehicles, Licensing and Permits, said that pent-up demand was a major reason there were long lines at the city’s five licensing offices Wednesday.

As of 4 p.m., the offices reported 275 state IDs issued for the day. Kamimura said the total included people who went in for renewals or duplicate cards.

“People took advantage of the fact that we started issuing them today,” Kamimura said. He advised those who don’t need to get an ID card immediately to “wait a few weeks when things die down” before visiting a licensing office.

It took an average of two to three hours in the same line to obtain either a driver’s license or state ID on Wednesday.

The 27-year-old Romero, of Waipahu, was an extreme case. After losing his wallet, he showed up at City Square at 7:30 a.m., just before the office opened. After getting to the front of the line two hours later, he was told that a birth certificate and Social Security card were not enough and that he needed another form of proof of his residency. Romero then caught TheBus to his workplace in Pearl City, picked up a pay stub from his employer and went back to Kapalama at about 1 p.m.

He then stood in line another two hours to turn in his application, waited an additional half-hour in the cashier line, and then waited more than 15 minutes to be called to have his photo taken before being issued his temporary ID. Romero left the licensing office at about 3:45 p.m.

Romero is among those who couldn’t wait, because he needs it to board a plane for a trip to California in the coming weeks. “It also helps when you need to cash a check,” he said.

Downtown resident Ellie Meza, 26, said it took her three hours to get her state ID. But, as with Romero, she had to leave and go back because she had left her Social Security card at home.

Meza said she knew to go to City Square, and not the old King Street state ID office, because she had looked it up online.

Had Meza or Romero noticed city employee Glen Hamada, who was near the front of the line with a help desk that displayed a large copy of the checklist of acceptable documents, they might have been able to save standing in line for two hours only to be told they’d have to go home and come back with additional documents.

Hamada estimated up to 80 percent of the line, at least in the morning, was made up of people seeking state IDs.

At Kapolei Hale, people also spent as long as three hours in line.

JoAnn Abrazado, 63, of Kapolei said she, her husband and two granddaughters purposely waited until Wednesday to go to Kapolei Hale “because it’s closer” than the old state ID office in Honolulu.

She and others who stood in line glanced anxiously at the single teller window accepting driver’s license and state ID applications at 12:30 p.m. Another employee was taking photos and trying to work a window at the same time.

“There should be more workers here, especially when it’s new,” Abrazado said.

Kamimura said the state law transferring the responsibility for state IDs to the city also transferred six ID worker positions to the city. But two of those workers chose to take jobs elsewhere in the state government, leaving four workers who helped out on Wednesday but are still technically in training.

The city is hiring to fill the two vacancies, as well as four additional positions funded by the city in anticipation of the increase in work due to the state IDs, as well as the delays caused by the more stringent documentation requirements for driver’s licenses mandated by the federal Legal Presence Act, Kamimura said.

People in line for driver’s license transactions at Kapolei were not amused.

Ewa Beach resident Mimi Bruhn, 33, said she’s a retail manager who had no time to break away from work to renew her license until she finally got to take Wednesday, her birthday, off.

Bruhn said she spent 21⁄2 hours in line. “I could’ve been home eating pancakes,” the mother of five said.

Several people said they drove to Kapolei because they had seen, or heard that, the lines were longer in Wahiawa and Kaneohe.