The Georgia Ports Authority has deployed facial recognition across the inbound lanes at Gate 3 of its Garden City Terminal, letting enrolled truck drivers clear the gate without presenting a Transportation Worker Identification Credential card. The deployment follows a trial at the Port of Savannah facility, and the authority plans to extend the technology to every gate at Garden City Terminal.
At an equipped lane, a driver who has enrolled is identified by camera and admitted without the manual document handover that the gate process previously required. The facial match stands in for presenting the TWIC card at the point of entry, though drivers must still keep the card in their possession while on terminal grounds, since the credential remains the federally mandated access document for the secure port environment.
Enrollment is handled in person rather than at the lane. Drivers register at GPA Public Safety in Garden City on weekdays between 6 a.m. and 5:30 p.m., presenting a valid TWIC card to complete the process, after which their facial template is tied to that credential for gate access. The arrangement keeps the TWIC as the basis of identity while shifting the gate transaction itself to a contactless biometric check.
Facial recognition has become a common tool for moving trucks through congested marine terminal gates, where each manual identity and document check adds time at the entry point. The Port of Rotterdam switched truck-driver security checks to facial recognition at one of its container terminals, and the Port of Vancouver has used facial recognition to verify drivers and vessel crews, part of a broader move by ports to biometric access control at the gate.
The Georgia Ports Authority frames the deployment as a way to provide a faster gate process for truckers, the constituency most affected by queue times at one of the busiest container complexes in the United States. With Gate 3 live and enrollment open, the authority’s stated plan is to bring the remaining Garden City Terminal gates onto the same facial-recognition system.
Sources: CDLLife
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
