Standing outside the Taxi and Limousine Commission's warehouse office building under a slow, cold drizzle, dozens of taxi drivers wait in line.

Here the cab drivers must come to renew their cab driver's license once every two years. For many of them, it is a tedious slow dance with bureaucracy that begins at dawn, when they wait until security guards open the doors of the Long Island City offices at 9 a.m. They shuffle through the regulatory maze, in search of the Holy Grail: a final stamp of approval at the end of a series of sometimes-surly civil servants.

"Once I get inside, there is another line, and then another line, and then there is a third line. Then you explain what you came for and you get a number and wait," said Cesar Ramirez, a 43-year-old Dominican native waiting outside the office in the shadow of the elevated seven train.

Ramirez, who has been driving a red 1991 Grand Marquis for a Bronx-based livery cab company for four years, said the wait is frustrating, but the treatment he expects to receive from the office workers once inside is humiliating. "They speak to you loud, they treat you like dogs." Though the process is not as efficient as some cab drivers might like, the agency that regulates who can and cannot drive one of the 41,000 cabs in New York City, provides an important public safety function, Taxi and Limousine officials say. Extensive criminal background checks are run on all new applicants and those seeking a renewal, ensuring the public can safely trust those who offer to ride.